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uchihacore · 4 years ago

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newton’s third law

PAIRING: keishin ukai x reader SUMMARY: every action has an equal and opposite reaction WARNINGS: nsfw, pegging, blowjobs

You frown at your reflection in the tiny rearview mirror, rubbing at the edge of a purple mark peeking out of your shirt collar. You hadn’t noticed it last night, but then again, you hadn’t really noticed much outside of Keishin calling you ‘Princess’ as he sat you in his lap and pressed a vibrator between your legs. And really, can you fault yourself for that?

Lucky for you (or rather for lucky for Keishin), you always carry a tube concealer in your purse, just for these types of situations. You pull out the tube and dab some concealer onto your tender neck, gently patting away the cream until it blends with the rest of your skin.

“Sorry 'bout that,” Keishin says from the passenger seat. You can see him from the corner of your eye, and he’s grinning like an idiot, which makes sense because he is an idiot.

“No, you aren’t,” you scoff, rolling your eyes. You need to get him out of your car before he makes you late for work, or worse, a student sees you with him. You pack the tube away, pulling out your lipgloss as Keishin shrugs unapologetically.

“Nope, not even a little bit. But really,” he says, leaning in closer until you can feel his breath on your ear, ��can you blame me? Seeing you all marked up, having to hide my hickeys at school, it’s so hot.”

“Nice to know you’re turning into a caveman, Keishin,” you say. And blush because the heater is on and not because of how close he is, the bruise on your neck tingling, “but not everyone gets the luxury of working for our mommy. Some of us have real jobs.”

(Which, admittedly, is a low blow. Especially considering he coaches the boys’ volleyball team for practically nothing, and gives Karasuno students discounts on like half his inventory.) You purse your lips together to rub in the lipgloss, fighting back an apology.

“And yet, here you are,” Keishin notes, seemingly unruffled. “Hiding my artful love-bites under a layer of makeup. Real job and all.”

“Get lost, Keishin,” you say, rolling your eyes. You toss your lipgloss into your makeup bag and turn to him. “I have classes to teach.”

“Of course you do. Have a good day at work, Princess.” he says, and the ballsy bastard actually kisses you before getting out of your car. You give him your best-unimpressed glare, and his smile widens when he turns and sees your expression before heading into the store.

And okay, yeah, maybe you a part of you is blushing and giggling on the inside like some idiot schoolgirl, but only because you’ve been treated like many things in your lifetime, from bitch to queen to child, but no one had ever made you feel like the Keishin does, like an actual, honest to God, princess.

But the other part is trying to figure out when he got so cocky, and how you’d allowed that to happen. Before you can contemplate further, a group of third-year students passes your car, and you put the car back into drive. Suddenly self-aware of how strange you must look mooning after the Sakanoshita Store guy, of all people.

You ponder it on the walk to your classroom, your sex life, or whatever it’s called, with Keishin Ukai is excellent, you’ll be the first to admit. He’s the first man ever to make your voice hoarse from moaning. But the last thing you want is for him to get a big head over it. He’s annoying enough as it is, thanks.

No, you need to get Keishin back down to Earth, somehow. He needs to be taught a lesson, taken down a peg.

And just like that, it hits you. Throwing a glance at your class, who are all too busy with morning pleasantries to notice, you pull out your phone and do a quick google search, you find the article you’re looking for and skim it. You’ll need to do some after-school shopping, but you’ll gladly sacrifice that cute skirt from H&M for this. You put your phone away and neatly write a line of notes about the kinematics on the chalkboard, drawing a smug little smiley face in the corner. Oh, this is going to be fun.

Your next 'meeting’ (because what the fuck else are you supposed to call it?) with Keishin is on Friday, and today is Tuesday. If you stop at the sex shop tonight and get the supplies, you’ll have two nights to figure them out. Which is essential because the last thing you want is to be unskilled in front of Keishin. He’d never shut up about it.

The school day passes by in a blur. You faintly remember scolding Nishinoya for using Tanaka as a springboard and a brief conversation with Hinata about the ‘epic highs and lows of high school volleyball’. Also, the concept of mitochondrial DNA had been clunking around your headspace for most of the day which was odd because you don’t even teach biology. Still, mostly you were just focused on the tantalizing idea of giving Keishin a taste of his own medicine.

You drive to the sex shop two towns over, as opposed to the one just off the highway, partly because it’s cleaner, but mostly because there’s less of a risk of seeing someone you know. You’d hate to have a student catching you buying a strap-on. Oh, the rumors.

The salesperson is a heavily tattooed girl with electric blue hair and a black heart stamped on each freckled cheekbone. She’s really helpful, though. She takes her time explaining just how all the buckles work, and which dildo to buy to fit into which harness, so do your best not to judge her too harshly. She also recommends buying silicone-based lube over water-based lube, because apparently it lasts longer and isn’t harmful in anal sex the way it is in vaginal sex.

So you give her a five-dollar tip for her troubles, to which she responds by giving you the toothiest smile you’ve seen in your entire life and telling you your boyfriend has no idea how lucky he is.

Which you give her another three dollars for because she’s completely right.

(About Keishin not knowing how lucky he is to have you. Not about him being your boyfriend, because he’s fucking not, okay?)

You bring your goodies home, feeling like you always feel after shopping: like you’ve just gotten a load of Christmas presents, and they’re waiting to be unwrapped. You have the presence of mind to hide the black and red bag in your oversized purse before entering your building. Just in case you happen to share the elevator with one of the old ladies on your floor.

Once you get into your apartment, you lock your door and layout your purchases on your dining room table, immediately picking up the dildo to test its weight. You’d picked a sparkly ribbed one, not because you particularly like it, but because you can’t wait to see Keishin’s face when he saw it. You’re pretty sure it’ll end up somewhere between shock, reproach, and begrudging amusement.

It’s the same abrasive yellow as Keishin’s bleached hair, average-sized, chosen more for entertainment value than anything else. You slot it into place then give the shaft an experimental tug to see just how well the metal ring in the harness holds it in place. Satisfied with the result, you examine the nubby, double-pronged vibrator on the opposite end of the harness. It’s supposed to go inside you when everything’s in place, so you get something out of it while you fuck Keishin senseless.

Though you’re reasonably sure that the very act itself of fucking Keishin senseless would have you curling your toes, you’re not about to deny yourself some extra stimulation.

You test the silicone lube between your fingertips. It feels weird, like the silicone-based face primer you’d used in high school, though this was less powdery and more expensive. You test on the skin above your knee, curious to see how long it takes to dry off.

While you wait, you take all of your clothes off, hanging up your blazer and throwing the rest in the hamper. You examine the harness, it’s an intimidating contraption of black nylon and silvery buckles, but that doesn’t deter you. You’re a high school science teacher, thank you very much. You explain physics to teenagers all day. This is nothing compared to that.

And actually, when you fit it onto your hips, it’s not too bad. A strap goes around each thigh, like a bikini, and one loops around your waist. You tighten the straps and peer down at the yellow, glittery penis now hanging heavily at the apex of your thighs. Huh. So this is what penises are like?

You grip the base and stroke up, grimacing at the sensation of your hand skidding over the rubber. Oh. Lube. Right. You squeeze some lube onto the dildo and start stroking again, much smoother this time. You hate how good the angle is; no wonder guys get so picky about handjobs. You fist it for a few minutes, feeling the vibrator bump against your clit. Which, considering its not even on, has no right to feel that good.

Once you get used to the way the dildo moves within its ring and how to compensate for the way the straps shift on your hips, you take the strap-on off and clean the dildo of lube. The stuff is way better than water-based lube, and you can’t wait to see it in action. You pack the strap-on and the lube back into the bag and leave it in your bedroom. Then you take a seat at your dining room table, pulling out a stack of ungraded papers instead. Time to spend some quality time with Marie Curie.

The next two days are validating, if nothing else. Keishin’s decided to go full little shit and keeps sexting you in the middle of your lectures like you’re supposed to just be able to explain oxygen theory of combustion after receiving a text detailing just how hard his cock is. You’d given him your best glare and sent a lengthy email telling him to fuck off, but to no avail. Plus, yesterday, he showed up at your office hours after practice, covered in sweat, and looking ridiculously hot, “just to say hi.” You won’t let it bother you, though. He’ll get what he deserves soon enough.

By Friday afternoon, you’re a mass of nerves and vindictive anticipation. Keishin’s been shooting you heated smirks all day. At lunch, he purposefully spills a packet soy sauce all over his hand just to seductively lick it off each of his fingers. You think it really speaks to your libido that, under the righteous indignation, you were actually pretty turned on by that. Stupid fucking Keishin, getting you hot and bothered with convenience store dumplings, of all things.

You’re practically vibrating when you open the door to your apartment at seven sharp, tamping down on your anxiety. You give Keishin your most relaxed, most expectant smile, and he responds by giving you that stupid(ly sexy) smirk and thrusting a bottle of cheap wine your way.

“Hey, Princess,” he says, bending down to peck you on the cheek. “How was your week?”

“Um,” you blink at him owlishly, thrown, “fine?”

“Really?” Keishin asks, stepping into your apartment and closing the door behind himself. As soon as the lock clicks into place, he’s on you like a starfish, head tucked into your neck. “Because mine’s been torture. All I can think about is how gorgeous you look under me. Over me. Everywhere. God, you drive me nuts.”

You feel something heavy in your chest. You bring your hands up to card through his hair. “I know the feeling.” Because all jokes and exasperation aside, Keishin’s under your skin in a big way, pumping you full of something that tastes like burnt, thick sugar and smells like Valentine’s Day chocolates. You’re drowning in Keishin Ukai, and you fucking love it.

“Do you now?” Keishin stills, then his hands change directions on your back, one scooping down to you ass and the other up into your hair. “And how does it feel, Princess?”

Oh, and there’s the smarmy little imp that’s been harassing you in school. Your lips curl into a devilish smile, out of Keishin’s line of sight, and you lean your weight into his hold. “Oh, I’m not sure I can even explain it, Keishin,” you sigh woefully. “Maybe I should just show you instead.”

“I think I could get behind that,” he agrees, pulling back. “Maybe even literally.” He leers down at you, eyes dancing with mirth.

“Classy, Ukai.” You snort despite yourself. “Remind me why I ever agreed to have sex with you?”

“Is that a request or an invitation?” His hands fall to your hips, thumbs rubbing lazy circles into your hipbones, “I accept both.”

You purse your lips, whether to fight a grin or a scowl, you’re unsure. “Let’s take this to the bedroom,” you suggest. “I have a surprise for you.”

“A surprise?” Keishin grins. “Lead the way.”

You set the wine bottle on the table and lead him by the hand to your room, hips swaying, nerves were forgotten. This is going to be so much fun. You open the door to your room, watching Keishin leap onto the bed. “Close your eyes and take off your clothes,” you order, unbuttoning your blouse. Keishin inhales sharply, eyes falling shut as he peels off his shirts and wiggles free from his pants. He’s already half-hard, boxers just beginning to tent.

“Can I open my eyes yet?”

“Not yet, no,” you replied, opening the drawer and pulling out your bag of tricks. you slid the strap-on into place, tightening the buckles with confident, practiced accuracy. “I thought we’d try something different today. Just the thought of it has kept me wet all week.”

Keishin twitches in his boxers, fists clenching on the edge of the bed. “Now, I’ve got to know. ”

“Open your eyes.”

Keishin blinks them open, freezing when they land on the dildo. You stroke it slowly, delighting in the way a ruddy blush works up his toned chest.

“Oh,” he says, sounding faintly disappointed. “I thought….”

“You thought you could tease me all week at school and get away with it,” you supply, baring your teeth when he flinches. “Newsflash asshole, every action has an equal and opposite reaction. So, what do you think of my cock, Keishin? I picked it out special, just for you.”

Keishin shudders, bowing his head in supplication. “Tell me what to do,” he says, voice gone hoarse.

“Answer the question.”

“It’s, uh,” Keishin stammers, glancing up at it, “it’s very… pretty?”

“Damn straight, it is,” you growl, striding toward the bed in long, slow steps. “What are you going to do with such a pretty cock, Keishin?” And wow, where is this coming from? You’re just supposed to fuck him and get it over with. This aggression is all-new, but you’d be lying if you said it didn’t feel good. And, judging by how hard Keishin is, you assume the feeling is mutual.

“Can I suck it?” he asks meekly, eyes pointedly not meeting yours. A total display of submission. You approve. You move to stand in front of him, positioning the cock at his lips, quirking an eyebrow at him.

Keishin groans, reaching out to suck the head into his mouth. He bobs his head, working deeper down your shaft each time. You bite your lip, feeling a hot wave of arousal work down your spine. He’s beautiful like this, cheeks hollowed around the length of yellow, sparkly rubber. Your hand leaves the base to cup the back of his head, and his hand takes its place. He pulls back to suckle at the head, eyes looking up at you heatedly.

Fuck.

“So pretty,” you sigh, hand petting the dark hair on the nape of his neck. “I can see why guys like this so much.” Keishin’s eyes flutter shut, lashes long against his cheekbones. “What do you think, Keishin? Do you like sucking cock?”

Keishin moans, sucking as deep as he can go. When his eyes meet yours again, they’re desperate. His free hand moves to his own cock, pulling it out of the gape of his underwear.

You freeze, pulling his head back by the grip in his hair. “Did I say you could touch yourself?” Keishin shoots you a pleading look, but you’re already pulling out of his mouth, dildo shiny with spit. “Take them off, get on the bed. Hands and knees.”

He stumbles to do your bidding, cock dark red and angry-looking. You pick up the lube from where you’d placed it on the nightstand and kneel behind him. The lube opens with a wet click that makes Keishin jerk in surprise. You spread the lube liberally on your fingers, reaching out to trace one over his hole, teasing. Keishin mewls and pushes back, eagerly. You feel another gush of heat between your legs, pushing the finger in slowly. You work the finger in and out, curling it down to find his prostate. You find it on the fourth try, judging by the way he keens and clenches around you.

The second finger is met with a little resistance, and Keishin takes in a deep breath to relax his muscles. You kiss the small of his back in praise, scissoring the fingers once you’re able. This is a lot more intimate than you’d expected it to be, working Keishin open like this. It fills you with a strange sense of responsibility, you want to do this right, you want to make it good for him.

“Just relax, Keishin,” you whisper, as he whines and clenches around your third finger, “you can do this. We can stop anytime you want.”

Keishin heaves a great, shivering breath, but he relaxes. You work as slowly as you can, pushing against his rim more than thrusting in until he’s loose enough to take you. You squirt more lube onto your fingers, pushing them slowly into him until he takes them all the way to the knuckle. You make sure to graze his prostate every few thrusts, only content when he’s moving back to meet you thrust-for-thrust.

“M'ready,” he whispers, sounding wrecked. You pressed a kiss his hipbone in sympathy. “Want you.”

“Okay,” you say softly, pulling your lube-slick fingers out of him. You lube up your cock quickly, pressing the tip to his rim. “You sure?”

“Do it, Princess,” he says, wriggling his hips, “or I’ll start bringing bananas for lunch.”

You huff out a laugh, rolling your eyes. “Idiot.” You hold the cock firmly in one hand, pressing it carefully into him. His breath hitches and stops, and he leans into the intrusion. You press a wet kiss to the back of his neck when the head slides in. “How’s that?” You ask, moving slowly until the base of the dildo is pressed against his ass.

“Gimme a minute,” he manages, shoulders locked with tension. You hold your position, rubbing soothingly over his back and down his flanks. After a minute, he moves, shoulders relaxing. “Go slow, okay?”

You murmur an “okay” and pull out an inch. You move back in, starting a rhythm of tiny thrusts. You only lengthen them when he grows impatient and flails a hand at you. You pull out almost all the way, then shove back in, gasping when the vibrator buzzes to life over your clit.

You begin moving in earnest, grinding into him to feel the vibrator flutter against your clit. God, it felt good. You shift to the right a little, and Keishin moans, all high and whimpery and divine. You move to hit that spot again, grinning when he chokes out another moan. You angle yourself so that all of your thrusts will meet that spot, draping yourself over his back to work a hand on his cock. He’s hard as a rock and dripping pre-cum as he twitches under your touch.

Keishin makes a broken sound and works his hips, thrusting back onto your fake cock and forward into your fist. You feel the world spin around you; this was by far the hottest thing you ever done with anyone.

And you think Keishin might agree because thirty seconds later he starts babbling:“ fuck, I’m gonna cum. Shit, feel so perfect inside me, please, let me cum, tell me I can cum, please. I need you to say yes, please.”

You suck in a breath through your teeth. He wants you to give him permission? Oh, fuck, yes. “Cum for me, Keishin, wanna see you cum around my cock,” you command, voice deeper than you’d ever heard it. Keishin whimpers, and he’s cumming, hips spasming. You watch his hole clench around your cock and feel yet another gush of heat, this one dripping down your thighs. You continue to move inside him until he gasps and pulls away. You pull out slowly, groaning at the way his skin tugs around the length of you.

He flips onto his back as soon as he’s free, fingers racing to undo the buckles of your harness. “You didn’t come.” He huffs, tugging at the straps, “I wanna make you come. Please let me.”

You shove the strap-on away, throwing it half-way across the room. “How do you want me, Keishin?”

Keishin collapses, rubbery, on the bed. “Sit on my face, Princess.”

Fuck. You can do that. You move up until your knees bracket his head and hold yourself over his face. “Fuck, you’re so wet,” he whispers, kissing the dampness from your thighs, working up to your center.

He licks into you delicately, mopping up all of your juices. You’re hypersensitive already and gasp into his teasing touches. Keishin slides his tongue inside you, curling it upwards. You keen, grinding down onto his mouth before you can stop yourself. You move to pull off to apologize, but Keishin holds your hips down, face more blissful than you’ve ever seen it. You run your fingers through his hair, swiveling your hips over his mouth.

“Need you on my clit,” you gasp and Keishin hums (which, okay, wow) and sucks your clit between his lips, sliding two thick fingers into you. He licks and sucks at you, pushing you farther and farther closer to the edge, but it’s the gentle nibble that finally pushes you over it. You scream soundlessly, fingers scrambling for purchase on the bed. His hands keep you from falling off his mouth as he licks you down from your orgasm. When you mewl in discomfort, he presses one last kiss to you clit before pulling away.

You collapse next to him, thighs sore and blissed out.

“Learn your lesson?” you asked him sleepily, eyes closing.

“No wonder none of the boys are failing physics. You’re quite the teacher,” Keishin nods, still panting slightly. “Though, I think you may have to go over it again sometime.”

You laugh and turn to look at him. He’s smiling back at you, eyes soft and happy. The heavy feeling in your chest returns, and you feel like you can’t breathe. You lean in and kiss him, ignoring the way he tastes like you. His own flavor was much sweeter. “I think we can manage that,” you whisper against his glistening lips.

He lazily tangles his hand in yours and brings it up to kiss you knuckles. “Good.”

When you wake the next morning with muscular forearms wrapped around you, you panic for a moment before remembering who it is and relax into Keishin’s embrace.

#keishin ukai x reader #keishin ukai imagines #keishin ukai scenarios

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ohkiyo · 4 years ago

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characters: shiratorizawa team, reader, sakusa kiyoomi, and komori motoya. (quick appearance)

warnings: none, just some good ‘ol fluff.

word count: 5.1k

a/n: this is like a peace offering for not posting any content for the last two or three weeks (?), I also did not intend for this to reach over 5k+ words lol, so hopefully you won’t get bored reading this one. I also gave up editing this somewhere in the middle, so yeah that’s that hahaha. XD

anyways have fun and enjoy! :D

«──────────── « ⋅ʚ♡ɞ⋅ » ────────────»

shiratorizawa navigation || stth navigation

«──────────── « ⋅ʚ♡ɞ⋅ » ────────────»

“We’re going on a trip in our favorite rocket ship, zooming through the sky! Little Einsteins~” both you and Goshiki bounce on your seat at the back of the bus, singing the theme song of the cartoon you two watch for fun a few days ago. “Climb aboard, get ready to explore there’s so much to find little Einsteins~”

“Aren’t they excited?” a fond smile made its way into Semi’s face as he watches the two first years belting their hearts out to a song made for children. Tendou and Yamagata joining the two, causing the overall noise inside the bus to increased in volume. Their English pronunciation was horrible, but it didn’t stop them from sharing their – talent.

Kawanishi, who was two seats away from the four was also humming along, snacking on a chocolate bar, his phone on his hand capturing it all on camera, probably for future blackmail material. While Shirabu who was seated beside him, continues to sleep, unbothered by the ruckus happening inside the bus.

“This is their first time going to Tokyo after all” Reon answered, before he tilted his head to the side when they switch to a different song, this time, it was Tendou’s famous baki baki ni ore. “Since when did Satori taught them that?”

“Probably since the moment they joined”

They were currently on their way to Tokyo for a practice match with another college volleyball team, the colleges that they use to play against in Miyagi were coincidentally busy with academics, something about an upcoming exam that they need to prepare for so they had to cancel.

Fortunately, with Shiratorizawa being a powerhouse school, Coach Saito and Washijou-sensei had connections to institutions outside of Miyagi. So they called up a friend who’s currently handling a college volleyball team and requested for a practice match.

The singing lasted for another thirty minutes before they eventually fell asleep, the bus now quiet. Washijou-sensei who was seated up front, let out a sigh of relief, thankful for the silence, something that Semi and Reon didn’t fail to notice. The two chuckled, as strict as he may be, Washijou-sensei knows when to let his players have their fun, he isn’t exactly a killjoy like some had thought. He’s actually very nice, once you get to know him of course.

«──────────── « ⋅ʚ♡ɞ⋅ » ────────────»

“You’re allowed to go sightseeing but please always bring a buddy with you, to prevent anyone from getting lost” his eyes landed on the older members, silently asking them to keep a close eye on their two first years. “Washijou-sensei and I will be meeting up with Coach Sasaki, so be back before 11”

Everyone nods their heads at his words before the two finally entered the elevator once it reaches your floor. The hotel you were staying at was a bit high class, you don’t know how the club’s fund covered it, but you weren’t complaining.

Each one of you had your own separate room, each guest had three food slips with, one was a free access to an eat-all-you-can food at the dining area’s buffet, while the other two were for a free breakfast, lunch, or dinner.

“So...” Tendou turned around, a grin plastered on his face as he held up the food slip the receptionist gave earlier. “Let’s go fill up our belly and enjoy Tokyo’s nightlife”

With that all nine of you piled into the elevator and press the button for the ground floor, the space a little too tight for your liking. The elevator stops at another floor, two new people entered, resulting in them moving backward to create a space for the newcomers, leaving you to press yourself to the wall.

“Sorry (Y/n)” Ushijima whispered, after accidentally stepping on your foot, he looks over his shoulder as you gave him a thumbs up. Your face now buried on his shirt, his perfume entering your nostrils.

He sure does smell nice, no wonder the girls are after him.

Luckily, for you, your struggle did not last long because finally, the elevator reaches the bottom floor. You swore you almost past out because of how cramp that space was, you feel like you were starting to develop claustrophobia because of it. For a fancy hotel, they sure have very small elevators.

Your group weaves through the other guest inside the hotel, some of them going back to their rooms; some were going the same way as you all were, while the others were going out to enjoy whatever Tokyo has to offer.

“Tokyo hotels are on another level” you whispered, following after them as they went over to where the eating utensils were placed. You carefully scanned the foods displayed, cuisines coming from different countries were all too delicious-looking, you feel like you want to have a plate of each.

“You’re drooling (Y/n)” you heard Shirabu say as he walks past you, the person that was standing behind the counter chuckled as you rub the spit that unknowingly trickled down your chin.

“Sorry”

“It’s fine” she laughs again before she suggested the lamb meat for you to taste. You haven’t tried lamb before so you accepted her offer, watching as she threw in a bunch of slices into the grill. “Well done or medium?”

“Well done please” she started tossing the meat around the steel griddle, the wonderful smell reaching your nose. It smelled so delicious, as the meat slowly turns to that familiar charred look of a well-cooked meat. Once she was done, she places it on your plate as she suggested for you to drizzle it with some of the sauce near the grills.

You moved from one area to another, filling your plate with foods before finally taking a seat on the table they occupied.

“Now we know who are the best people to bring to buffets” Yamagata mused, eyeing yours and Goshiki’s plate filled with different kinds of food, not only that, there were at least one or two more plates on the side also filled with foods.

“They’re big eaters”

Kawanishi took a piece of meat from your plate, exchanging it with a fried dumpling that he accidentally dipped in a spicy sauce. He can handle his spice, however, this particular dip was so spicy his mouth was burning from it.

“Kawanishi-san why…?” you took the glass of cold water Ushijima offered you as you drank it all. It didn’t help though, your mouth was still burning, so Semi fed you a spoonful of chocolate ice cream, the dessert finally easing the flames in your mouth.

“Sorry (Y/n)” Kawanishi bit his lip to stop the smile threatening to come out, secretly sharing a low five with Tendou from under the table. However, that didn’t go unnoticed from Semi’s watchful eyes, stepping on the red head’s foot, Semi shoots him a pointed look as Tendou tries to remove his leg.

“Ow, ow, Semi-Semi that hurts”

The setter didn’t listen to him and continued eating his meal, they all ate in silence after that. Too hungry to strike a conversation with each other, their attention focus on the food in front of them.

Dinner went by fast, once they had finished their food they went out of the hotel and walk through Tokyo. The streets are a little too crowded than the ones they’re used to in Sendai, passing by different kinds of coffee shops, restaurants, inns, and hotels. The choices were endless, it all depends on where you all plan to go.

“Let’s go there first, I want to buy some manga” Tendou pointed at a rather large book shop just across the street, customers walking in and out of the store, wrapped packages in hand.

The inside was filled with rows and rows of shelves full of books, such as novels, textbooks, and of course, manga, on the sides were a section for school supplies and other similar materials. Tendou looks like he’s in heaven because the store offers manga that wasn’t available in Sendai. The moment his foot steps inside the store, he immediately disappeared behind the shelves where the manga was displayed.

“Wasn’t this the book Yato-sensei told us to buy?” Shirabu opened the textbook, skimming through its contents.

“Its ¥2,000” Kawanishi taps the price tag of the same book he’s holding. Shirabu pinches his lips together, closing the book and putting it back to where it belonged.

“Nope, I’ll just borrow from the library”

They move to the end of the aisle to see you holding a basket filled with different kinds of stationeries, Reon and Ushijima also going through the pens and notebooks they had on display before dropping it inside the basket you were holding.

“That’s a lot of pens (Y/n)” Goshiki drops a couple packs of sticky notes in your basket before grabbing a pen and examining it. The little penguin at the top sparking his curiosity as he clicks it, the ball-point emerging from the bottom part of the object.

“My pen’s keeps on disappearing, along with my highlighters and I don’t know who’s taking them” Goshiki stayed quiet at your reply, blinking at you, once, then twice before he slowly returned it in the basket. Reon let out a quiet laugh, fully aware that it was Goshiki who keeps taking your school supplies and not returning them.

Goshiki grabs three more pens and two more highlighters, the exact number of stationeries he took then dropping it in the basket. “I’ll buy these for you (Y/n)-chan”

You smiled at him in gratitude, standing in line at the cashier. “Thank you ‘Tomu-kun”

After paying for the items, you were once again back to the cold street. Aimlessly walking towards your next destination.

“Let’s go to a karaoke bar” Yamagata suggested, zipping up his jacket as the cold had become a little too much for him. Letting out a shiver from the cold air.

“Sure” they located the nearest karaoke bar, entering the establishment. They paid for the amount required for a one-hour session, before entering an empty room. Semi, Tendou, and Yamagata going for the songbook and choosing what song they’re going to sing, while you, Goshiki, and Ushijima went through the menu instead.

“So who’s first?” Tendou’s hand shot up as Yamagata gave him the mic, pressing his song’s code as the title flash on the screen.

“You’re singing Lion King?” Semi laughs watching as Tendou dance around to the song’s opening beat.

“The song has been stuck in my head for a long time now” the redhead cleared his throat before he started singing the first verse.

“There’s a Japanese version of that song?” Kawanishi whispered in surprise, Tendou’s jolly voice and merry demeanor fitting so well with I Just Can’t Wait To Be King’s upbeat tune. It was as if the song was made for him.

10:15pm.

There were only 15 minutes left before the one hour expires, Shirabu was singing some sort of heartbreak song, while sitting on top of Kawanishi who was laying sideways munching on some chips. Totally unbothered by the weight on top of him.

The setter ends his song, a cue for everyone to start packing their stuff and go back to the hotel before Coach Saito and Washijou-sensei catches them still walking around after curfew.

«──────────── « ⋅ʚ♡ɞ⋅ » ────────────»

It’s been three hours since you went to bed and unfortunately not once were you able to get a wink of sleep, nightmares were plaguing your mind. Two people, you’ve never met before constantly visits you in your dreams. It was a man and a woman, you couldn’t see their face but their voices you could hear.

They sometimes try to talk to you, asking how you were doing, if you were alright, or simply saying words of encouragement whenever you were feeling down. Sometimes they were accompanied by another girl, a teenager, who looks like the 15-year-old version of your aunt.

Once again, you turned on your side, pulling your blanket a little closer, screwing your eyes shut. However, it wouldn’t work, so you sat up, and check your phone.

1:30 am.

You chewed on your bottom lip, contemplating whether or not you should bother one of your teammates. They had a game tomorrow and you don’t want to disturb their sleep, but you were getting restless, and you’re afraid that you might not be able to fall asleep at all.

Finally making up your mind, you got up from your bed, grabbing your phone, key card, before exiting your room. Walking down the hallway towards Goshiki’s room, you have a feeling he’s still awake since he likes to play games until the wee hours of the night.

Standing on his door, you knock twice, pulling at the bottom of your shirt as you look left and right. The empty hallway looking a little too creepy for your liking, you knock again and this time it finally opened, a half-asleep Goshiki greeting you.

“(Y/n)?” he rub his eyes as he opened the door wider, letting you inside. “Did you have nightmares again?”

You nodded your head. “Can I sleep with you?”

“Sure” you followed him to his bed as he took the other side and you on the other. Both of you laying under the covers facing each other. “Better now?”

“Yes, thank you” he gave you one last sleepy smile before closing his eyes. So far, Goshiki was the only one who knows of your nightmares, after he discovered you one time during your first training camp crying under a table.

He was the one who comforted you and offered to let you sleep with him, it somehow became a routine and whenever you would knock on his door, he immediately knows what’s wrong.

«──────────── « ⋅ʚ♡ɞ⋅ » ────────────»

The door to Goshiki’s room burst open as a group of panicked Shiratorizawa upperclassmen barge into the room. Goshiki having heard of his door nearly tearing off its hinges, sat upon his bed. “Senpai?”

Semi marches over to him, grabbing his shoulders and basically shaking him awake. “(Y/n)’s gone, she’s not in her room. We can’t find her anywhere”

“What?”

“Oh man, oh man. If the coach finds out we’re screwed” Yamagata and Tendou grips their hair in frustration, as Reon and Ushijima discuss the possibilities of your disappearance. Kawanishi and Shirabu though were the only ones calm in this situation.

“Huh?” Goshiki’s brain still wasn’t working though as he still sat there in a daze, unaware of the growing problem his upperclassmen were having.

Kawanishi ruffles his hair as he looks around the room, shifting from one foot to another, before his eyes landed on a lump he failed to notice before that was beside the first year. He taps Shirabu on the shoulder then pointing at the said lump, who was starting to move, leaning dangerously close to the edge of the bed before falling off and landing on the floor with a thud. Bringing the blanket along with them.

“What?” they watch as you continued to snore away on the floor, the fall clearly didn’t affect you in the slightest.

Shirabu shots Goshiki a look of suspicion as the rest shakes you awake. “Why is (Y/n) sleeping with you?”

He didn’t really get any answer because Goshiki just looks at him, still half-asleep.

A scandalized gasp left Tendou’s lips as he points a shaky finger towards the spiker. “Did you and (Y/n) do something? You’re only first years, wait until you’re in college!”

“Satori, what are you talking about?”

“Tendou, I think you took this the wrong way” Ushijima’s hand landed on Tendou’s shoulder, as the redhead whips his head to the captain.

“But Wakatoshi-kun you can’t be too sure!”

“(Y/n) probably got scared and went to Tsutomu for help” Reon started pushing them all out of the room. Semi carrying you, still wrap in Goshiki’s blanket, leaving the first year still sitting on his bed. Once his door clicks shut, he fell back on his bed and went back to sleep.

«──────────── « ⋅ʚ♡ɞ⋅ » ────────────»

“Let’s have a good game!”

You carefully arrange the water bottles and towels on the bench as your team and the college team had their match. Diligently doing your duties as a manager.

“Hello” you look up to see your opponents’ manager standing there, giving you an easy smile, stretching out her hand for you to take. “My name is Mikana Ritsu, nice you meet you”

“(L/n) (Y/n), nice to meet you too Mikana-san” you answered, grasping her hand and giving it a firm shake.

She took a seat on the spare bench, with you taking the place beside her. “I didn’t know they had a manager, are you new?”

“Yes, I’m a first year. I started just a few months ago”

She let out a hum in response as the both of you observe the game in silence, leaving your spot once in a while to assist your respective players before sitting back down again and watching the game. From beside you, Mikana lets out a long yawn as she covers her mouth with the clipboard she’s holding.

“Are you tired Mikana-san?”

She nodded, another yawn leaving her lips. “I had to stay up very late last night for my research paper” she chuckled. “Sleep is very hard to come by when you’re in college”

You turn to look at the older girl, a question forming in your mind due to your curious nature. “Mikana-san, how is college like?”

She taps her chin for a moment, looking up at the ceiling to figure out the best answer for your question. “It’s an emotional roller coaster you know? One moment you’re smiling, then the next you’re crying your eyes out”

She turns her body to look at you. “I remember during my first year that my history teacher vowed to fail all of us because the school has enough students already”

You look at her incredulously, surprised at what she said.

“She made her exams and quizzes very difficult, and her projects were also very ridiculous” she huffs in annoyance, bad memories resurfacing. “We didn’t understand at first why she was doing it, but eventually we found out that she was having problems with her dissertation and she’s taking out all her frustrations on us”

You stared at her wide-eyed, your mouth open agape. The fuck? “We all passed though, so suck for her”

“That was just mean”

“I know right?” she lets out a sigh, before standing up from her seat and re-wrapping their setter’s fingers with tape. Tying it to his preferred tightness before she went back to her spot and him going back into court. “Then we have our thesis”

“Oh yeah, I sometimes see students having breakdowns because of it. Is it really that bad?”

“The process of doing it is very hard, because not only do you have to choose your own topic, you have to choose a very specific one and one that has a lot of references available” you nodded your head, listening to her every word. “Getting rejected is fairly common, so you have to go through the process again and then present it to your panelist”

“When you do your defense, is it scary?”

She laugh at your choices of words, but she can’t really deny it though, because she did felt scared whenever they had a defense. “It’s nerve-wracking honestly, you have to prepare an answer for every possible question or else they’ll reject your paper”

“And you have to repeat all over again” she nods. “That’s so tiring”

“It is, but we have to comply or else we’ll never graduate”

“True”

You both talk throughout the game, until the final whistle was blown and the match finally ended, your team winning the match.

“Shiratorizawa High is still as strong as ever I see” she mused, watching as both teams gave each other a bow. “Congratulations (L/n)-chan”

“Thank you Mikana-san”

You both went on your separate ways, tending to your own players. Giving them their towels, and water bottles along with their snacks. After your final goodbye, you all entered the bus, driving back towards your hotel. It was still early, 3:00 pm in Tokyo is still very lively compared to in Sendai. Most people prefer to stay indoors due to the intense heat, however, a bustling city will always be busy no matter what time of the day.

“We’ll be leaving early tomorrow, so if any of you have anything buy. Souvenirs and other things, you can do so right now. But as always, bring a buddy with you and be back by 11” Coach Saito reminded one last time, before he and Washijou-sensei went inside the hotel, probably to rest and get some sleep before they go out again.

“I actually have some things to buy at the mall” Semi started adjusting his bag on his shoulder.

“Me too” Yamagata said, rummaging through his bag to find his phone, he almost started panicking when he didn’t saw it, but immediately let out a relieved sigh when he saw the device hiding under his sweaty shirt.

“We saw some souvenir shops a few blocks away from here, we’ll be over there”

Once everything was settled and everyone had decided where they want to go. You all separated, Semi, Reon, Ushijima, Yamagata, and Shirabu going to the mall to buy the things they needed while you, Tendou, Kawanishi, and Goshiki decided to walk around instead.

Going through the various shops that were selling different types of souvenirs from shirts to mugs, to keychains and other kinds of stuff.

“(Y/n)-chan, do you have my phone with you?” Goshiki patted his pockets as he looks for the said device.

“It’s in my bag” to patted the backpack you were carrying, adjusting it on your shoulder before letting out a groan at how heavy it is. “Kawanishi-san can we exchange bags? This one’s very heavy”

He nodded his head, pulling the strap over his head as you exchange bags, you let out a sigh of relief, thankful that the strain on your shoulders are now gone. The smell of freshly cook taiyakis catching your attention as the four of you speedwalk towards the stall making it, the food still hot and fresh.

“Ah, hot, hot, hot” Tendou rapidly let out a breath of air to cool down the burning of his tongue and the roof of his mouth. Not expecting for it to be too hot.

You gently blew on your taiyaki, waiting for it to cool down, before you started taking small bites. As your group resume walking along the streets, you spotted a shop filled with trinkets, calling for their attention you all entered the store.

They had a wide range of displays, and although some were a bit expensive, it wasn’t stopping you from buying what you want. The allowance your Aunt gives you every week could literally last you a month, and so any extra money you had, you deposit it in your bank account and wait for the time when you have to use it.

Walking over to Kawanishi, you took your wallet from your bag before you walk off to where they had plushies on display, that dolphin plushy the only thing on your mind right now. Taking the dolphin from its spot on the shelf, you examined it, before looking at a similar one but this time it was a bit bigger. Not too much, so you were contemplating which one to buy.

“The big one looks very comfy though” Goshiki appears beside you, holding a scarf, a cap, and a sweater. “You can snuggle it to sleep”

“Yeah, but don’t you think it’s a little too big?”

He observes the two carefully taking in their size, but still, he preferred the bigger one, so you followed his suggestion.

“Oh! Why not take this one too?” he grabs a tomato plushie of the same size. “Tomato-chan~”

You flick him on the forehead. “I can’t believe you’re sticking with that nickname”

“It’s funny though” he grinned at you.

“Tsutomu, (Y/n) let’s go” the both of you didn’t hear Tendou called you out, as the two of you stayed there. Goshiki insisting that he buys the tomato plushie for you, while you immediately denying his offer because it was already too much. It cost about a thousand yen, and he still has the items he’s holding. Not only that, you still remembered how he bought you those pens and highlighters last night.

The bell hanging at the top of the door rang as the two middle blockers left the shop, unknowingly leaving the two of you behind.

They cross the street, turning a few more corners. Before they were back to the same book store everyone went to last night. Tendou wanting to buy a few more mangas, then Kawanishi forgot he needs to buy a new calculator because he broke his old one. He could just buy one in Sendai, but why wait when he could just do it now?

“(Y/n) can you get my wallet? It’s in the-“ Kawanishi turns around, but no signs of the two first years. He looks from left to right, thinking that maybe they’re just around the corner, but alas, there were no Goshiki, and (Y/n).

“Uh… Tendou-san” Kawanishi tugs on the red head’s jacket as Tendou turns around.

“Hmm, what is it Taichi?”

“(Y/n) and Tsutomu are gone”

Tendou’s eyebrows furrowed as he looks behind the second year, thinking that maybe he was just pulling a prank on him, but still, like before, no first years in sight.

“Oh dear”

«──────────── « ⋅ʚ♡ɞ⋅ » ────────────»

“I can’t believe you actually bought the tomato plushie” you stared at the red-colored plush inside the bag you were holding. Both of you exiting the shop.

“Told you I’d buy it” he looks proud though, you don’t know why, but you’re very grateful for the gift. You note to yourself to get him something in return in the future. “Are Tendou-san and Kawanishi-san still inside?”

“Maybe” he went back inside the shop, as you waited outside the door. When he went back out, he looks worried, which also made you worried.

“Something wrong?”

“They’re not inside”

Your eyes widened. “What?”

He rub his arms, as he went back inside again to check. But still, they weren’t there anymore, walking back out, he shook his head.

“Did they just left us?”

“Probably”

“Should we go find them?” you started fidgeting on your spot, before you remembered, you had Kawanishi’s bag with you. Opening his bag you located his phone only to be left disappointed when you find out it’s dead. “Great, now we can’t contact them”

“Should we go back to the hotel instead?”

“I don’t even know which way our hotel is”

Both of you shared a heavy exhale, retracing your steps to where you both felt your hotel was located. However, you both accidentally took a wrong turn and were now in a different part of the city.

“I knew leaving that place was a bad idea”

“Oh. Aren’t you two from Shiratorizawa?” you saw two persons walking over your direction, wearing a light green and yellow track jacket and track pants.

“Yes” you answered, the one who was currently talking looks nice, you don’t know about his companion though. Even with half of his face covered with a mask, you could still feel the intensity of his stare.

“Ah. I’m Komori Motoya, and this is Sakusa Kiyoomi” he pointed to his friend. “We’re from Itachiyama, we went against your school before”

Itachiyama, the school is familiar, but these two? Not very much. However, they seem nice.

“Are the others with you?” Komori looks around the vicinity. “I don’t see them”

“Uh…”

“You got lost didn’t you?” it was Sakusa who asks this time and Komori let out a laugh.

“We can’t contact them because this phone is dead-” you showed them Kawanishi’s phone. “-and it’s also the only one we have right now”

Komori turns to look at Sakusa. “You have Ushijima’s number right? Why don’t you give him a call, they might be worried right now”

Wordlessly, Sakusa fished his phone from his pocket and dialed your captain’s number, pressing the loudspeaker button. It rang a few times before Ushijima finally picks up.

“Hello?”

“We found your stray” Sakusa answered before putting the phone in front.

“Ushijima-san!”

”(Y/n)? Goshiki? Where are you two?”

You both look at the two, but Komori answered for you. “We’re in front of the Kamakura coffee shop, where are you?”

“In front of the Marimo bookstore [1]”

“Alright stay there, we’ll be there in ten minutes”

“Alright”

The call ended and the four of you made your way towards the bookstore, Komori was the only talkative one between the two, instantly befriending the both of you. Although Sakusa would sometimes participate in the conversation, majority of it, he prefers to listen.

“So, what are you doing here in Tokyo?” Komori questioned.

“We had a practice match with a college team today” Goshiki answered, holding your hand to avoid getting separated from the group, his initial fear from when he discovered you two got left behind still present.

“Are teams in Miyagi too weak to handle Shiratorizawa?” Sakusa’s eyes momentarily shift in your direction before focusing forward.

“I guess so” you shrug your shoulders, you were told no high schools in Miyagi wants to have a joint practice with your school anymore, and you don’t really know the reason behind it. So you can’t really say they’re all weak.

Thankfully ten minutes later, you arrive at Marimo Bookstore to see your seniors waiting in front of the building in worry.

“(Y/n), Tsutomu. There you are!” Tendou was about to give you two a big hug, but Semi beat him to it by bonking the two of you on the head.

“You idiots! What did I say about wandering around?!”

“We weren’t wandering around! We were just inside the shop when Tendou-san and Kawanishi-san left us!” you replied with a pout, rubbing your head as Semi shot the two a glare as they both look away. Kawanishi casually whistling a tune whilst Tendou rocks himself back and forth on the soles of his feet.

“Well, we’ve delivered the package. We have to go now, see you guys next time” Komori wave your group goodbye as Reon and Semi said their thanks.

Sakusa gave Ushijima a nod before turning around. “See you at nationals Wakatoshi”

“Of course”

They both left, their tall figures disappearing into the crowd, as your group went back to your hotel. Upon arriving at your lodging, you stumbled along with Coach Saito and Washijou-sensei near the entrance, the two older men inquiring of your shopping spree. Everyone answered the question as honestly as they could, leaving out the details of yours and Goshiki’s little accident.

Satisfied, they both left while your group went back to your own room to enjoy the rest of your stay, and to avoid any more mishaps.

«──────────── « ⋅ʚ♡ɞ⋅ » ────────────»

[1] anyone here who also watches sekai-ichi hatsukoi?

a/n: the idea from the college convo between Mikana and reader was inspired from a conversation I had with a mutual hehehe, though not word per word but just the overall gist of it. Dear, if you’re reading this you know who you are. ;)

also, my team stories aren’t suppose to contain any romance, yet here I am lowkey shipping Goshiki and reader.

148 notes · View notes

closer-stars · 4 years ago

Text

Good Thing - Mingi (1)

Member: Mingi Genre: A lil of drama, tension, fluff, maybe angst depending on how you look at it. Requested: Yes Word count: 8k Content: Dance team leader y/n. Basketball captain Mingi. Both of them are stubborn. Enemies to Lovers. Mentions of food. Mentions of near fainting. Mentions of tension. Academics. Slowburn. Notes: after a long creative block, I’m back once again with long fics. Divided this into two? three? parts. This was supposed to be short, what the fuck. Anyways, I hope this fits your expectations, anon! Please I didn’t expect this to be so long, but here we are. I was already itching to post something after so long so here we are.

[ Mountain ] Capt, the venue’s already taken. :(((

That wasn’t a good sign. You were in class when you received that message from your best friend. It was a good thing your professor allowed gadgets as long as it was used for note taking. In true student fashion, you lower your brightness just a bit as you switch tabs to reply to San.

[ You ] Look for the next best. I trust your decision. I can’t stay too long, prof might catch me not paying attention.

You close the tab quickly and catch up on what your professor discusses. Fingers fly across your keyboard as you continue to add additional connections and theories that aid in the discussion. Your best friend and your second co-captain, Wooyoung, was slightly struggling with keeping up with the note keeping, you were already sure that he would ask you for help.

[ Mountain ] Don’t kill me, Please. :c

That didn’t sound good.

[ Mountain ] 6-9pm. Court 2.

That is definitely not good. Before you could reply, the bell rings and a chorus of laptops closing, notebooks closing could be heard in the room. Your professor quickly reminds the class of an exam the following week along with other reminders that just fly through your ears.

“Did you catch what he said about brand identity?” Wooyoung asks as the two of you leave the classroom with heavy feet. Your coach had thought it was a good idea to have all of you go through house drills for the first half of the training last night. Fast forward to today, you and Wooyoung were struggling with walking. Even with just simple walking, Wooyoung would make pained whines.

“I got them. I’ll send you my notes when we get a seat somewhere. I want my coffee while I massage your old muscles.” The both of you found a good shady spot where you could discuss what to do in tonight’s training session as your coach had personal issues to deal with. “Can you message the team where our training’s going to be tonight? San said it’s at Court 2, 6 to 9 PM”

“Heh, six to nine and okay.”

“How mature of you. I’ll be back.” You (try to) jog to the vending machine as you get yourself a quick dose of caffeine. By the time you get back, taking small sips of the caffeinated bean water, Wooyoung stares at you as if he had realized something. “What?” You ask as you settle down next to him.

“Court 2? That’s the only available one left for tomorrow?” He asks.

You shrug. “It’s either we get free venues or we pay a meal’s worth for studio rentals.” You reason as you send your notes to the male. As a student-dancer, you knew how hard it was to get studios and have it come straight from your own pocket. The competition was three months away and you didn’t want the team’s finances to run dry this early.

“Can you at least try not to bite off Mingi’s head?” Wooyoung pleads, almost pouting.

Song Mingi is the team captain for your university’s basketball team. That said, he’s also often the face of the school due to his grades and being captain of the team. He also often got in your nerves whenever you cross roads. You’re also fairly popular in and out of school: captain of the dance team, often competing in outside school competitions, and even being featured in some big time gigs. The gigs paid the most for your bills.

You pat your lap so that he stretches his legs from the muscle pain. Careful fingers press on his muscles, causing him to yelp in pain. “Breathe, you baby. I’ll try my best.” You snort, clearly entertained by how low his pain tolerance can be outside dancing. “Tell San we’re in the usual spot if he wants to--”

“Ello!!”

Speak of the devil and he will appear. Your co-captain and best friend as well has appeared a few feet away. “Captain!” He calls out, once he could see your face. Him noticing Wooyoung first then you wasn’t a surprise anymore. These two often plot pranks on you during down time since your second year in the team, this was old news to you by now. “Captain, I’m really sorry. Court 2 was the only one available. The other team already got our first choice and-” he goes off, rapidly defending himself.

“San, it’s okay. I know how annoying that team is. Let’s just do our best tonight so we can take over the studio for finals okay?” You shake your head, understanding the issue. The dance competition had your own team versus other dance teams inside and outside the university. It was a big event that tickets to watch were always sold out.

“Please. I don’t think I can handle you snarking Mingi off when he tries to drop by.” San mumbles.

The thing is, Mingi and you had a handful of common friends. The expectation of his course, Business Administration, being more difficult than yours, a Media Arts student. His tendency to be just as stubborn and strict as you are in your respective fields made it hard for both of you to see eye to eye.

“I don’t think I’m ready to see their bitch face anywhere outside the stage.” Wooyoung mentions lightly. It was an obvious fear though. The amount of auditionees for your team each year was pretty hefty, the reason? Your friends had pretty faces. To put it simply, your resting bitch face is scary even if unintentional but an intentional one had a lot of people staying clear of you. To whom do you give the intentional one? Shallow auditionees and Song Mingi.

By the time you’ve eased the knots on Wooyoung’s leg, you’ve finished your coffee. “Guys, I promise I won’t fight him tonight.” You say with a sigh.

San just looks at you with a raised eyebrow.

You pout at him. “I promise! Besides tonight’s cleaning and drills. If I get distracted by that demon, give me the spiderman reps.” Wooyoung places his other leg on your lap, a cheeky grin on his features. A look of empty annoyance shoots from your eyes at him but you still do as he needs. Your two best friends give in with groans. It’s next to impossible to reason with you sometimes. It’s also your stubbornness that brought the team to the current greatness it had.

“Three sets of spiderman reps. After training.”

The bell rings, signaling your next class which was quite unfortunately, with the two of them still. San rises from his seat, your bag and laptop already in his hands as he waits for the both of you.

“Last class for the day.” He states as you take your belongings from him.

It’s going to be a long day for the three of you.

“Five minute break” The entire team’s breathless from the drills. Some of them walked off the burn, others drinking water, others opted to lie on the cool tiled floor. You were part of the first group. You bend your back a little to get rid of the soreness that was starting to wear on you. The burn on your arms and shoulders is already a familiar feeling to you but you still hate it. At least it means your body was getting stronger, if the burn only started to set in now. When you reach for your water bottle, you realize that it was already empty. “Fuck..” You groan as you look for a water refilling station.

The nearest one was near the basketball team’s court.

Whatever.

You make your way to the station, making sure that you would go unnoticed by the basketball team as they did their drills. So far, so good. No one paid attention to you as you fill your bottle up with water. That was until Jeong Yunho had noticed you.

“Hey! Are you training here too?” His warmth made it hard for you to despise him even if he was best friends with Mingi. Why couldn’t he be the captain instead?

Eyes shoot up and you’re greeted by his pink hair. You wave at him quickly then take a sip of water. “Hey Yunho! Yeah, Is the music too loud?”

He shakes his head, a few strands of hair covering his view. He pushes it back and it was there when you realize just why he had a large following. “Don’t worry about it. The guys appreciate a little music every now and then.” A sigh of relief slips through your lips. At least the volume isn’t too destructive for everyone. Why wasn’t he the captain instead?

“I have to go now. Good luck with your practice!” You bid goodbye quickly, your Mingi radar was going off.

Yes, you had a Mingi radar in your head.

When you turn on your heel, you are greeted by his stoic features. Even without words, the tension was pretty thick in the air. “Anyways,” you mumble onto your bottle as you try to walk past him.

“If you’re going to train in here too, being conscious of your noise would be helpful.” Mingi’s voice drips with deep annoyance towards you. You on the other hand, are trying your best not to do spiderman push ups so you just hum in response.

“When I talk to you, you speak.” He says, rubbing his temple in annoyance. It was moments like this that genuinely make you wonder how he is the face of the school when his attitude was absolute horse shit.

“Noted with thanks, Song Mingi.” You say simply. Yunho looks at the both of you in mild alarm. He was aware of your less than stellar relationship with his captain but he never saw how bad it was until today. Is it easy to keep your face from shooting lasers at the tall male? No but you were going to do your best. The two of you exchange steely gazes until both of you look away, stalking back to where your team was.

“What took you so long?” Wooyoung asks as he watches the rest of the team clean the choreography, with San leading at the back.

“Mingi tried to stall me.” You explain under your breath as you take your spot next to Wooyoung as your eyes keep an eye on their movements. With those who have been accepted, you weren’t as intimidating as you make yourself to be. You wouldn’t admit it openly, you viewed them as your family. You weren’t strict all the time, knowing when to have an iron fist and when to relax. Thoughts were drifting elsewhere that you found yourself gnawing mindlessly on your own water bottle as you watched everyone go through the choreography. Two blinks and you’re focused again. To the untrained eye, it already looked pretty good but to the three of you, you knew it could be better. The team holds the last post for a few counts before doubling over for air. “Catch your breath first then from the top. Seventy five percent energy but I want you guys to focus on your angles and extensions.” You state, much to the relief of some.

“Does this mean you’re going to have to do spiderman reps?” Wooyoung asks, trying his best to not show his excited smile at seeing you struggle. Little shit.

“If you’re looking forward to it so much, do it instead.” You shoot back with a smirk. You direct him to join the team in dancing with a quick jerk of your head to their direction. “Join the run. I want to see how you’ve been doing as well.” You stand up. “San! Join the team in the run. I want to see how the two do as well.”

That’s how the rest of the night goes: repeated countings, claps, and feet stomping to the beat, with the occasional cheering from members to keep the energy up. Before you let everyone go for the day, you asked for one more run of the piece to record. The only issue now is who to ask to hold your phone because all possible places for your phone were either too low or too dangerously high to be on its own.

You spot Yunho coming out of the basketball court with his bags. His training must have ended. “Jeong Yunho!” Your voice manages to surprise everyone with the volume. Who knew you could bellow at such strength? The tall male’s startled by your voice and walks over to you.

“I didn’t know you could yell that loud. Do you need help with something?” He notes bemused at such a feat.

“Training can do that. Can you record our run for us, please?” You raise your phone up, hoping he says yes. Everyone’s tired and so are you. His hand is outstretched and it makes you sigh in relief. “You’re the best.” You say. “Start recording when I press play.” The tall male gives you the okay signal as he raises the phone’s angle to make sure everyone’s seen in the screen. Bless his soul. He does as you told him. The run goes without a hitch, by now everyone knows to give their all in the last run to which they do. As your team dances, you notice a familiar brown mop of hair in the peripheral vision. ‘Focus.’ You force yourself to do so as you do your segment, all while cheering for the others who were starting to lose breath. He stands next to Yunho, watching your entire team dance. A small part of you hopes that he’s watching the team as a whole. Once the run was over, a few of the members drop their sore bodies to the floor, relishing the cool feeling of the cement. You dismiss the team, telling them to cool down and stretch on their own as it was late. You walk over to the angel and the demon, both with different emotions displayed on their features. “How was it?”

Yunho hands your phone back and flashes two thumbs up. “That was really cool! You guys really keep with your team’s legacy.”

Those words make you smile through the exhaustion that has set on your features. “Thank you, you probably have to go now since it’s late. Thanks again for helping us!” You wave him goodbye, doing your best to not look at the demon next to him that stares you down. Just as you were about to leave them be, he speaks up.

“You looked tired the entire time.” Mingi says with a shrug. “Gotta be an example to your members, y’know?”

Without looking back at the two males, you heave a sigh. You were tired and the stress for your team and academics was setting in. “Song Mingi, I really am in no mood to deal with your lack of a filter. Please just leave already.” Before you could stop yourself, you find yourself looking over the male. “You call yourself the captain when you’re here throwing unneeded comments. Please do reflect first on yourself before trying to fight me.” You say with a roll of your eyes as you take the chance to leave.

You don’t see Yunho drag Mingi away before he could say anything. You do see Mingi greet some members of your team and your two best friends as if he didn’t just try to rile you up. You also do see Wooyoung and San’s concern for you. “Don’t do the spiderman reps today. Just do it tomorrow.” Wooyoung immediately pipes up. He knows how you get when you’re angry, the last time you tried to do something out of spite, you sprained your wrist.

“Let’s just go grab some late dinner. I need food.” Your voice comes out breathier than usual. Too exhausted to bother keeping up a front as you wipe your sweat with the collar of your shirt..

The three of you were seated in a fast food chain, dietary plans be damned. You needed something filling and if it was going to be through nuggets, a burger and a big cup of iced coffee then so be it. You had your head in your hands. The two had taken cared of your order, both of them returning to your table with trays full of food and drinks.

“This is just so shitty..” you mumble, staring at your nuggets. “I have to deal with the mess the alumni left the team with. I mean, I don’t mind covering the expenses from the gigs I’ve done but it’s not going to be enough. Not being in a studio is already so..” you couldn’t continue your thoughts so you shove the entire nugget into your mouth.

“Don’t beat yourself up. You’re doing everything you can for the team.” San reminds you while he eats his burger. How he manages to fit what looked like a double decker in his mouth was still a mystery to you.

“The team already knows of the issue since day 1 and they know you’re doing everything you can.” Wooyoung adds gently. He hated seeing you be so tough on yourself.

Both of them were right but it doesn’t stop you from beating yourself up for having to do your best with tied hands. This isn’t a choreography where you could still move as freely even if you had your hands tied. This is real life with no practice.

“I know you’re still annoyed at Mingi’s comments but come on, he doesn’t dance. So don’t pay attention to him.” San reminds you, already halfway with his burger. Boys with their almost insatiable appetites without gaining that much weight is something.

You take a deep breath, pushing the strands of hair that cling to your face as you pull yourself together again. If you were going to cry, it wasn’t going to be here. “Fuck it. I’ll enjoy these nuggets. San, where are we training tomorrow?”

“Studio. Yeosang got us a discount.”

“Perfect. Also, make sure he stays in the team once I graduate. His strengths could be so good for house segments also that discount trick he has.”

“Don’t talk about leaving us yet!!” The two of them cry out at the same time, and by chance they harmonize.

“Don’t leave the dance team for the choir. Both of you are taking over my position.” You shoot back with laughter.

The next training comes and it’s a lot more peaceful for your head. Your coach was back teaching another segment for the entire time. Whenever your coach was around, you cut back on your jokes and made sure that everyone didn’t go too out of line with their ways to keep the morale up. The training session leaves everyone much more exhausted as compared to yesterday.

“Good job guys, you guys did a lot better compared to the last time I saw you. Let’s go for gold.” Your coach says as the three of you, along with Yeosang manage the payments. It’s that type of comments that make this entire competition season worth it. Once all the payments were settled, everyone was slowly going on their own separate ways to deal with their own requirements. Wooyoung and San were going to head to a computer shop to play for a game or two, how long that would be was unknown. “I’ll see you guys tomorrow. Don’t be late for our history class… Please.” You stated, knowing just how your professor was strict with attendance and tardiness.

San whines at you. “We won’t! We promise.”

Wooyoung interjects, “Call him an hour earlier, you know how he is in the mornings.”

You shake your head at their antics and wave them off. “Fine, see you guys.” You readjust your bag as you slowly make your back to your dorm. A long shower and a hearty meal were needed before you could focus on your papers. After you freshen up, you pick up your laptop and other essentials as you make your way to your usual coffee shop.

The staff in the coffee shop already knew you. The amount of late nights you spent here to catch up on your studies to the point where they have to tell you to leave as they were closing was innumerable. They also know your current situation just based on your orders. If your order of coffee is stronger than usual, you were most likely stressed. If you had a meal with your drink, you were going to be forcing yourself to finish your requirements.

You ordered a macchiato with an extra espresso shot and a sandwich.

By the time your orders came in, you were taking down notes from the reading on your screen. You thank the staff for bringing your order to you, probably having missed them calling your name from the adrenaline in your body to get all of these finished. It’s only when you look up that you catch sight of two familiar faces that were ordering. An exhale and you reach for your earphones. Once you find them you plug them into your laptop, going back to work.

An elbow jabs his side, and he pulls out his earphones, looking at Yunho with a miffed expression. “What? Yunho, there’s barely any free table here. Let’s just get our orders and leave.” Mingi grumbles. The spare tables were outside but that also meant being in the company of smokers. Yunho pays no heed to his best friend’s complaints and gestures to the table next to yours.

“That one’s free.”

“You’re insane.”

“I’m just pointing it out! Besides, air con.” Yunho also adds with a grin. Since last year, his rivalry with you had become a little blurry. He doesn’t remember what the two of you constantly fought about at this point but he clearly knows he can’t stand your presence. His best friend on the other hand, wanted to change that before all of you go on your own lives.

The air con point was a strong one to fight against. Instead of fighting against it, he just grumbles and lets Yunho do as he wishes. At least if a fight breaks out between the two of you, he could point it at Yunho. The logical part of his head also reasons that if a fight breaks out, his reputation along with the school’s would be destroyed. He couldn’t win.

He waits for their orders off to the side, prolonging the inevitable of having to sit near you. Once their orders have arrived, he and Yunho carry them towards where you are.

A hand appears at your peripherals and you look at the owner. The recognition taking a while to set in. The dazed look in your eyes after being disturbed was a little amusing in his perspective.

“Hey, sorry for disturbing. Is this table free?” He asks with an apologetic smile.

Your eyes scan the entire coffee shop for possible places for them to stay just so they don’t disturb you. All tables were taken. “Uh yeah sure, go ahead.” With that, the two boys sit next to your table as you go back to your work.

Thankfully, the boys leave you be as you continue to write and read. When you let own a yawn, you knew you had to give yourself a bit of a break. You pull out your earphones as you start eating again to give your brain a break. You look at your list of things to do and a little bit of relief sets in when you manage to finish a good portion of what can be finished tonight.

“About time you ate.”

That was enough to cause you to choke on your coffee. You look at the source of the voice and it was Yunho, who was obviously amused with your reaction.

“Did I scare you?”

“You’re still here?!” You ask incredulous, when you shift your gaze to your front, you were greeted with the devil. Mingi obviously looks like the reading material isn’t much of an interest, not that you could blame him. A small tinge of sympathy sets in you when you realize his notebook was filled with calculations. Yuck.

Yunho tilts his head in confusion then nods. “Yeah, we have an exam coming up.” The male peeks over his laptop to see that Mingi was on a different topic. “I thought you were studying for history.”

“Marketing had more things for me to deal with.” The other states in a flat voice as he continues to spin his pen.

That’s when you notice that there were some eyes on your table, to be specific, on Mingi. It made you a little thankful that you weren’t as out there in the public as he was. It didn’t change the fact that you feel a little bad for the both of them. “Is this under Professor Hwang?” You ask as you catch sight of a familiar reading on Yunho’s laptop.

“Yeah! Did you take it already?” This causes both pairs of eyes to land on you.

“I took it earlier today. Do you guys need help?”

That was enough to make Mingi lean a little forward, for Yunho to look a little more awake. “Are you sure? You’ve been working hard with your own thing.” Yunho reasons carefully. Your to-do list reaches your view again and you take a moment to gauge how good you can juggle your work and theirs. As much as you despised Mingi, Professor Hwang’s anger was something you’d rather everyone avoids.

“When’s your exam?” By now, your gaze has shifted to your laptop screen as you try to look at your schedule.

“Friday..”

“Give me your schedules.” You say, giving Yunho your contact details. “Both of your schedules. I’m already thinking of how to squeeze you into my schedule.” The two boys look at each other in surprise but they give you their schedules, your tone left no room for any opposition. No wonder you were the captain. No wonder people are intimidated by you. Mingi found it impressive.

“I’ll message Yunho when and where to meet me. We can’t meet during the day, tell me immediately. If both of you want a study session after our respective trainings that work too. Just keep in contact with me with any update.” It wasn’t a request. It’s an order.

You didn’t even notice that Mingi had pulled his hoodie down to look at you properly. Your attention was too focused on what Yunho was talking about regarding the coverage. None of you really intended to do so but you eventually were giving them tips on how to study for her exam, and they promise-- well more of Yunho promises to make it up to you after.

“Excuse me, We’re about to close up for the day.” the staff informs gently as he goes to the next table that still had people poring over their books.

With that, the three of you pack up your things. You finish the rest of your coffee. 3AM. You have 5 hours of sleep left to last through the day. “I’ll see you both depending on your schedules.” It was a reminder for Yunho to send their schedules and he does immediately. You bid them goodbye, as you leave the coffee shop on your way back to your dorm.

“So they put away their rivalry with you, Mingi.” Yunho notes with a glance at the male who put his hood up once more. He hums in response. To others, he might as well have ignored his best friend for the comfort of his own thoughts. Yunho knows better. Mingi just wasn’t the type of guy who openly admits his thoughts.

“If we’re studying with them later, can we choose a spot where no one’s looking at us.” He mumbles. Yunho felt for the guy. He didn’t want the role of captain, wanting to just play basketball with a team. Yet being the captain also meant that he would eventually become the face of the university and potential love calls from potential sponsors. The poor guy could barely focus on his studies without having strangers oogle at him when he was outside university grounds.

“Will tell them.” Yunho returns as the two make their way to their own apartment.

You reach your room after freshening up. 3:15AM. You were definitely going to need a strong cup of coffee throughout the day. A reminder to call San when you wake up was prepared. With that, your sleep was swift.

The cursed wind chime alarm jolts you out of your slumber. 8AM. A curse elongated by a dry groan escapes your lips. As you wash your face, you call San’s phone. “Pick up the phone, you sleepy butt.” You mutter as you prepare for your day.

He finally answers the phone though with a whine that pleads for more sleep.

“Get up. We can’t be late for class.”

His whines could’ve been mistaken for cries but you hear the sheets ruffle under his movements.

“I’ll buy you a donut, San. Just please get up and get ready for class.” The things you do for your friends.

“I’m up, I’m up. Can you get the birthday cake version please?”

“I’ll buy it after class, so you better show up.” You hang up just in time for a message to come in.

[ Yunho ] we’re free at 2-4 pm and 10-2am later!

[ You ] I can help 2:30-4 meet me by the benches near the chemistry department.

The class goes by painfully slow but you give San the money for the donut. Before he could complain that he wanted you to buy it for him, you quickly cut to the chase. “I just need to help someone with their studies until 4. See you guys later.”

You arrive at the benches with a sandwich in your free hand. No sign of the two boys yet, so you choose a bench away from prying eyes but visible enough for the two to see you. With some time to spare still, you take a few bites of your sandwich as you look through the notes as a refresher. The shuffling of feet against the pebbles and grass catch your attention. Did you expect Mingi to come first? Maybe this exam really meant a lot for him.

“Yunho’s following shortly. He just had to use the restroom.” He explains when he notices your wandering eyes. That shuts you up as you give him a polite nod, letting him settle on the bench opposite you.

“I think you forgot something.”

When did he strike conversations with you? He hands you your earphones then rubs the back of his neck.

“You left before Yunho or I could catch you.”

Your jaw drops slightly at the sight of your favorite earphones. How could this have slipped your mind? This pair was your favorite and your most used due to your activities. “Oh my god. Thank you for taking care of it.” There was no hint of underlying annoyance in your voice as you kept them in your pocket.

Just then, Yunho jogs towards where the two of you are, sitting next to you. “Sorry to make you wait!” Mingi lets out an exasperated sigh, as he brings out his notes.

“It’s fine. Let’s get started now cause I don’t think we’ll have any strength to study later.”

That’s how the ninety minutes go by. Quizzing the two guys on certain topics while giving them tips on how to do well for the exam. It’s not in you to spoon feed them the answers, and even if you did, the exam was half multiple choice and half essay. With every right answer they gave, you would smile brightly and nod. The smile seems a lot brighter around Yunho, when it came to Mingi your smile was a mix of pride and surprise. Not that you thought Mingi slacks off on his studies, he just seems like the type to not pay attention to things that don’t interest him.

Mingi also notices how you seem to open up when things go smoothly. Almost the entire time, your eyes were on Yunho as he carried the conversation with questions and clarifications over the topic. When he hears his question on the connection of the uprising to succeeding events, he pipes up.

“Wait, Yunho. That’s not part of the coverage, also, a totally different event.. You confused it with the other one.” Mingi explains, brows slightly scrunched as he explains the event to the best that he can from memory.

You look at him with an impressed smirk. He definitely had brain cells that give him the credit that he deserves. You gesture to him as you shift your gaze back to Yunho. “There’s your answer.”

Just like that, the bell rings, telling all students that the ninety minutes is over. The broody male is the first to pack his things up, thanking you under his breath. The pink haired male on the other hand, thanks you profusely and waves goodbye to you as they head to their last class.

You don’t realize the breath you were holding until they left, eyes drop to the earphones that Mingi had returned to you. It’s a nice change you suppose, as compared to all the daggers you’ve thrown at each other.

Today’s training was held in the same place. Court 2. You could hear the basketballs bouncing against the court floor along with the squeaks of rubber shoes against the floor. If you listened carely, you could hear Mingi cheering for the other members as they continued with their drills. You had your own drills too. This drill being new choreography. The team was picking up the new choreography faster as compared to the past. Those who weren’t part of the segment your coach was teaching were off to the side, cleaning what they know. San and you were part of the group that was learning the new segment. Both of you being the centers. The choreography is admittedly trickier. You didn’t think you’d be doing krumping next to San but here you are. Your group goes through it over and over as your coach directs on how and where to execute the movements. Occasionally, your coach would ask some of you to try a stunt or trick. He wants the gold as much as the entire team and it sometimes reaches the point where he forgets he’s leading student-dancers.

Your group was gasping for breath afterwards that you had to remind your coach to check on the others and teach the other segments that need to be taught. It worked and it gave your group some more time to breath and rehydrate themselves. Only five weeks left. Ideally, after this week would be intensive cleaning and minor editing. Everyone already had the mix but your coach constantly would try to change little things. Were you worried that this would be rushed and cost the team a place in the top three? Definitely. Being an overthinker and having a coach who was just as bad, if not worse wasn’t helpful. You thanked Wooyoung and San for reminding him of the logistics and reality of things.

The next few hours go quickly and everyone is admittedly, surprised and relieved that they finished the piece. San gives you a quick massage to relax your nerves as your coach asks the team to do the entire piece, cleanliness not really being something he’d look into for now. The entire number goes by with a few road bumps, none of which he seems to mind. At least he had mercy after being reminded, and by the last run, everyone lets themselves crumple to the ground. Training was officially done for the day. Everyone pays their share for the coach for the day then leaves. Wooyoung and San help you gather the payments then leave quickly, both having to cram papers that were due in two hours.

This leaves you and your coach alone.

“When is the team going to pay? I need the money too.” You knew where he was coming from. His family had some health issues that had to be dealt with, it was why he didn’t come the other day. You’ve been pestering the team the past few days in the chat for their share, some of them always pushing it back. Your body wanted nothing but to eat something then sleep. Even if you had your gigs as a source of income, it was enough to get you by. With how your coach urgently needed the money and how you couldn’t think clearly, you caved. You ask for his bank account details and right there, you transfer the money to his account from yours. You put the phone screen to his eye level to show the proof of transfer.

“There.” You say, waiting for him to notice the proof before packing up your things. He nods and you try to keep a note to raise your talent fee in order to make ends meet. He thanks you for the payment and as he was about to discuss another matter regarding the team, he gets a call which you assume is from his family.

“I have to go. Let’s talk tomorrow.”

You nod, bidding him goodbye before packing up your things. Holy fuck you were hungry and stressed. Studies, dance and now money? Of all times it had to be when it was near hell week? You want to cry.

“What are you doing here? It’s late.” Mingi asks, his tone clearly not helping you in your current predicament.

“What, I can’t stay here now? Is this your territory, Song Mingi?” A groan slips from your lips, but at this point it just sounds like a growl. “I can’t let myself catch my breath here?” You spit out. For once, his eyes widen at your venom.

“I’m asking because it’s already midnight. You know how the streets outside can be a little dangerous at this hour.” He’s exasperated. A small part of him can’t get himself to be his usual self around you after having helped him in his studies.

You immediately stand up from your spot, about to give him a piece of your hazy mind. Only, when you stand up, you feel the blood suddenly rush and your head spins for a moment. You lose your balance in that moment and the man knows better than to say anything that could make this worse.

Maybe it was because of his long limbs that you’ve come to be envious of, or his quick reflexes from his basketball history, regardless he manages to hold you up before you crumple to the ground. His finger gently pulls your lower eyelid down to peek at the color of your eyes. Pale pink. You need to eat and drink something fast.

“You need to eat.” He states, holding your bag with his free hand as he tries to keep you up.

You knew that you weren’t really fine but you still had some sort of want for self preservation that you let out a weak lie. “I’m fine.”

“No you aren’t.” The chances of you putting up a fight were low so you let him guide you to the nearest food chain.

It was the same fast food chain you go to with Wooyoung and San every post training. You couldn’t get yourself to look at the menu, the smell of meat, fried strips of potato and grease were overwhelming you. The bright lights made you want to shut your eyes. He notices this and brings you first to a booth far from the noise of people. “Stay here.” He doesn’t know why he said that, you were in no position to go anywhere else as you bury your features in your arms. He crouches down to your hunched level. “Do you want anything in particular?” You shake your head weakly. “I’ll buy you something okay?” You just nod. No strength in you to say that you didn’t want him to pay for you, that you were broke, that you just wanted to go home and sleep.

The time he was off buying your meal, you were floating in and out of consciousness. You reach for your water bottle, to finish what was left before the food came. All that was left were two mouthfuls of water which you suppose could stave off the hunger pains. As you wait for Mingi, you fish your phone out from your bag as you message the team to remind them of their unpaid dues. Your next gig wasn’t going to be until after this competition. Could you juggle a gig within the next five weeks while dealing with your student duties? Probably not but it is being considered.

Mingi arrives shortly with a tray full of food for you and him. “I owe you.” You mumble as you straighten up at the sight of food. He shakes his head as he hands you a double burger, orange juice, and ice cream. For him, a burger, nuggets, ice cream and coke.

“You need this. Call it even, you’re helping me with my exam.”

You stare at him for a moment then look at the meal. You were hungry and you couldn’t stop yourself from digging in anymore. The size of the burger makes it a little tricky for you to take big bites, forcing you to take small bites slowly. All of which was Mingi’s plan. After seeing how pale and weak you were, having you eat quickly all of a sudden wasn’t going to be good for you.

“H-hey, is everything okay?” Mingi asks, alarmed as he hands you some tissue to wipe your cheeks with. “You’re crying.”

The pad of your thumb brushes against your cheek and you could feel the wetness of your thumb. You take the tissue from his hands as you wipe your eyes. “I guess it’s the stress.” You mumble. It still hasn’t set in that you’ve reached your limit and you’re just wiping away the tears as they come.

“Wanna talk about it?” He offers. For tonight, he puts aside the sour relationship he has with you.

So you do. Through the tears and food, you share what’s been causing you distress. The internal issues of your team thanks to the alumni’s mishandling of the finances. The financial issues of having to cover some of those issues with your own money. Your academic workload. The pressure of being a captain when you feel like you just became one because there was nobody else willing to take on the role. Along the way, you ended up admitting your jealousy towards Mingi: how the school tends to favor the basketball team as compared to the arts and dance teams, how he’s doing so well as a captain, how finances is the least of his worries for the team.

That takes him by surprise. The entire time he’s been giving you hell, you’ve been going through your own hell. The idea of internal financial issues never crossed his mind, though that was mostly due to the fact the school covers the expenses for travel and what not. Along with the sponsorships his team receives from sports brands. While he was so caught up in his own jealousy towards you, he didn’t realize that you had your plate just as filled as his, if not heavier. He says nothing, opting to eat his food as you unload everything you’ve kept from everyone. It was obvious from how affected you were, just how passionate you are for this field and to be disregarded, disrespected and be the one to clean up after the mess would clearly take a toll on anyone. He watches you carefully, you’ve stopped crying but your eyes were puffy. It takes a while before you take a deep breath and that was a sign you finished with your tirade.

“Are you open for my own thoughts or is it better if I just listen?” He finally asks after finishing his burger.

You let him take the floor this time as you continue eating your burger.

Here, he admits his wrong doings to you. Just as you were jealous, so was he. Jealous of how you could keep a low profile despite having performed in front of so many people over the years. How he thought you were doing well in juggling your academics with your workload. How you could manage a team as the sole captain, even if Wooyoung and San were your co-captains. He also admits how he thought your team was doing well in terms of finances considering the clothes you have for the performances. Along the way, he apologizes for having added to your hardships. “If you guys need help with financial stuff, just tell me.” Maybe the words passing around of how rich his family was true.

You stare at the male, your drink halfway to your mouth. That was enough to make him backtrack his words. “I mean, if that’s okay with you.” Instead of saying anything that could worsen the situation, he just opts to eat the rest of his food in silence.

For the first time that night, you chuckle at his actions. Fingers brush through your hair as you push away the strands that block your vision. “I’ll think about the offer. Thank you though for it.”

For the first time, he actually shoots you a genuine smile. He walks you back to your dorm, not minding to carry some of your things. It was a quiet walk, not that any of you minded, at least this silence was comfortable as compared to the tensed ones of the past.

Once you reach your place, you take your bags from him. “Don’t forget tomorrow okay?”

He stares at you, confused at what prompted you to say such. A few seconds pass and it clicks. “Ah! Yeah, we’ll be there, same place?”

You nod as you unlock your door. “Get some sleep Mingi. It’s been a long night.” You bid him a good night with another smile before retreating into the safety of your abode.

The male realized that your smiles seem to make him feel odd emotions.

The following day goes by quickly. You manage to do alright in your exams and presentations-- though a good portion of your presentation being candid. You go through your usual routine of buying your lunch as you wait for the two in the same spot.

You didn’t expect Mingi to call your name out, especially in disbelief. Yunho following him shortly. “What’s the occasion?” Yunho asks as he eyes your business formal attire. You look down at yourself and you realize that they are probably more accustomed to your casual wear and training clothes.

“Oh, presentations. Some of my professors are particular about the attire so…” you trail off with a shrug. “Anyways, let’s get started before you need to go to your next class.”

You twist your questions a little more this time, testing their memory and understanding of the events. They manage to answer your questions with ease, even going as far as connecting the events to events that happen after. Your heart swells with pride and confidence. If they pass the exam, they were going to do so with flying colors.

The bell rings and it’s the same old once more. “That concludes our last session. You’ll do great tomorrow.” You say as you give them a standing ovation. Yunho was the first one to react.

“Whaaat, it’s that fast?” He whines with a pout. With your attention sole on the faded pink male, you don’t catch Mingi’s mixed expression. Just when the two of you were getting along, both of you were going back to your own lives. “We won’t see you anymore?” He asks, almost like a child whose lollipop was taken from them.

“Boys, you got class. You’re going to be late!” So you shoo them off. Mingi nods and stalks away, Yunho waving to you as he jogs after Mingi.

“You think we’ll do okay tomorrow?”

“We’ve been studying for this more than needed. We better, man.”

You watch them jog towards their next class until San notifies the group chat of their venue for the upcoming days.

[ Mountain ] Hey everyone! We’re using the studio for the remaining weeks starting today! ^^

[ Welsh Corgi ] fries are on us every pre-training so be there early!

[ You ] *only on wooyoung and san :p

Who knew that today was going to be the last day you’d see Mingi and Yunho?

Part 2

#ateez scenarios #ateez fluff #ateez angst #mingi fluff #mingi scenarios #mingi angst #ateez x reader #song mingi #mingi #my writings #unedited ish #will edit it when i wake up #i only got 18% on my laptop #i was already itching to post something so here we are #anyways i'm kind of 75% done with part 2

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girls-love-girls1200 · 5 years ago

Text

66. Kim Lip x Reader •Together•

This came longer than expected, hope you enjoy it

Warnings: slight mention of abuse

A locker slammed shut a few feet away, one of the guys from the swim team threw you a flirty look as he passed by, his friends hanging around him like flies, resting your head against the cool metal, you closed your eyes, trying to regain control over your thoughts, you didn’t even hear your best friend approaching until her face was an inch away from yours, dark eyes staring at you inquisitively,

“You look awful y/n jesus, weekends at your dad’s seem to be taking a toll on you.”

Picking up your backpack, you flung it over your shoulder, hitting a freshman in the face in the process, Siyeon broke out in a fit of laughter as she ruffled the poor boy’s hair before shoving him playfully, he didn’t seem to be having so much fun as scurried away without even giving you a chance to apologize, you let out a tired giggle before your eyes met with the disapproving ones of last person you wanted to see at that precise moment. Siyeon stopped in her tracks as she felt you tense up against her, but it was too late, the senior counsellor had already grabbed your arm, your best friend’s grip tightening around your other,

“Y/n, you will not avoid me any longer than you already have.”

You smiled sheepishly at the older woman who had insisted on scheduling sessions every Monday mornings with her, after having found out about your current family issues through a notice that unknowingly to you been passed to all your teachers.

“Listen Yoona, I get it, you’re young and full of passion for your job, you’re ready to help poor teens struggling with how butt ugly they are, but I do not need your help, I’m fine and more than competent to handle my emotions and my struggles on my own thanks, have a great Monday.”

Her pretty face morphed in shock at your words, shrugging her hands of your arm you made a quick b-line, dragging Siyeon behind you.

“Sarcasm and denial are not the way to deal with this y/n!”

“Ah! Lippie thank God you’re here, maybe you can talk some sense into your girlfriend.”

Her hands reached for the sides of your face, lifting it slightly so that she could get a good look at it, she immediately noticed the dark circles under your eyes, you weren’t wearing any makeup, and your lips seemed more chapped than usual, you felt your body tingle under her worried gaze, pulling away from her you glared at Siyeon who only pulled her tongue at you,

“Why? What’s wrong babe?”

She tried to pull you back towards her so that she could look into your eyes but to no avail, you resisted, grabbing onto your best friends’ arm, Jungeun’s eyebrows furrowed with concern,

“Nothing is wrong, Yoona just tried to scold me for hitting a freshman, but I manged to get away from her devil grasp just in time.”

You knew your girlfriend hadn’t bought a single word you said from the second they left your mouth, she was about to reply when by miracle Jiwoo popped up from behind her, not even greeting an of you before diving into the wild account of how her weekend went, her bubbly voice cutting through the tense atmosphere that had been previously forming. You felt Jungeun’s inquisitive stare on you all the way to class, for probably the first time in your life you were relieved of arriving at your algebra lesson, your teachers’ expressionless face welcomed you in the doorway as you scurried inside, thinking about the imminent conversation that was going to happen the next time you’d see your girlfriend.

You knew avoiding confrontation was probably the least rational choice you could make, yet you found yourself sitting alone on one of the restricted balconies on your school’s second floor, with the curtains pulled inside you knew it was impossible to see you, this had become your go to spot whenever you felt like skipping class to be on your own, nobody ever used the language lab in the morning anyways, just making it easy for you to disappear when needed.

The night before had been so chaotic you hadn’t even had a moment to prepare your lunch for today, your stomach grumbling in complaint as you nibbled on some crackers that had been in your backpack since the previous week,

Your phone lit up on your lap, as another one of the girls sent you a message, asking where you were, you were about to turn it off when a message from your best friend arrived,

From Wolfass🐺: I know where you are, I’ve told the girls you had some homework to catch up on, Lippie isn’t buying it and she keeps staring at me as if she wants me dead. I’m terrified.

Your heart swelled with love at the realization the Siyeon would always have your back no matter what, it had been that way ever since you were in your diapers, she never left your side.

To Wolfass🐺: I owe you a thousand, love you so much.

As the bell rung you made the decision on skipping literature, guilt pooling in your stomach as you imagined Jungeun’s face as she walked into the classroom without seeing you in your usual spot next to the window, so that you could look at the birdies when things got boring.

Your phone vibrating dragged you out of your self hate spiral, another missed call from your girlfriend and a new message.

From Wolfass🐺: You know I got you, but I really think you should give Miss Lim a chance, you don’t have to handle this thing on your own babes, and you’re gonna have to talk to Lip at some point, that girl loves you so much she’s on the verge of killing herself from overthinking.

You felt your muscles tense in anxiety at the thought of having to talk to Jungeun about how you were being forced to spend the weekends at your dad’s place, she knew your relationship with him was complicated to say the least, but you were also aware of how much it would pain her to know what you really had to go through.

To Lippie💘: Sorry about today babe, not feeling very well don’t worry tho I won’t miss tonight’s game, I’ll see you there and we can talk after

To Lippie💘: I love you

From Lippie💘: I’m already worried but ok

From Lippie💘: ttyl

She was not happy at all. You cursed at yourself for being so damn stupid, knowing you should have been honest with her from the beginning, and yet, your own denial had stopped you. Not being in the right head space you packed your stuff and left. Your mom was on a day shift today so you knew there would be no one at home to interrogate you on how come you weren’t at school.

The chilly spring air nipped at your cheeks, wrapping your arms around yourself you closed your eyes as Jungeun’s familiar scent enveloped your senses,

“You’re so cheesy y/n, wearing your girlfriend’s team sweater at her first game as team captain. You almost make we want to throw up…”

You shoved Siyeon so hard she almost fell off the bleacher, ignoring her curses you scanned the field anxiously until your gaze fell on a familiar head of chocolate locks, Jungeun was busy tying her hair into a tight ponytail, her eyes scanning the crowd, timed seemed to stop for a second as her nervous gaze met yours, a toothy grin plastered itself onto your features as you waved at her. Her own smile didn’t quite reach her eyes as it usually did, giving you a small nod, she lowered her head back to the ground.

Your body worked faster than your mind, quickly getting on your feet after leaving your soda with Siyeon, you bounced down the crowded bleachers, making your way to the side of the field you pushed your way through the school paper club until you reached the fence that separated you from the team. You didn’t even have to call her, in a second your girlfriend was in front of you, hands resting on the cold metal between you. Your hand reached for her cheek as you smoothly pulled her into you, her lips fit perfectly between yours, a low hum of appreciation swallowed in the kiss. Pulling away as you heard her coach calling all the players to him, you smiled warmly,

“Don’t be nervous, you’ll do great, just as usual.”

Jungeun’s cheeks tinted pink at your words, you caught her red lips in one last loving kiss before turning around, your girlfriend’s eyes never leaving your figure as you made your way back to your seat, warmth spreading through her entire body after the quick interaction. She was ready to win.

The eerie car park was almost empty by the time your girlfriend stepped into it, in a second she had spotted your figure, resting against her car, scrolling through your phone, with the last energies that remained Jungeun sprinted towards, a surprised squeal leaving escaping mouth as she lifted you into her arms.

“Well look if it isn’t miss star player herself.”

An embarrassed groan tumbled out of her lips, running her hand through her soft hair she smiled at you. There were these moments in your relationship in which neither of you had to say a word, and yet you both understood, you knew her smile meant more than she could ever even put into words, yet a shadow of concern still lurked in the corner of her eyes.

“I like seeing you in this sweater, I think it brings me good luck.”

Her long fingers toyed with the strings of your sweatshirt, slowly creeping up until they reached your chin, she pulled your face to meet her own. Again, as her lips danced with yours, you could understand exactly what she wanted to say, her fingers trailing down to your hips, suddenly you found yourself pressed against the cold metal of the car, unsure whether the goose bumps came from that or from your girlfriend’s tongue sliding against your bottom lip, almost as if she was asking for your permission. Your fingers pulled teasingly at the soft baby hairs on the back of her neck, her cold hands finding their way under your shirt eliciting a small hum of appreciation that only seemed to spur her on, her lips detached from your own before leaving a hot trace along your jawline, on your pulse point, teeth nibbled at your sensitive skin as your head tilted back in response.

Jungeun pulled away at light speed as a series of whistles and cat calls echoed through the parking lot, a few of her teammates that had obviously lagged behind could be heard laughing as they made their way to their own vehicles, your girlfriends head burying into your neck, you could only imagine the shade of crimson her cheeks had turned. Chuckling softly you caressed the back of her head before getting into the car, your fingers toyed with the heating panel for a couple of minutes, trying to ignore the unspoken words that hung in the small space, you could feel Jungeun’s eyes on you every few seconds.

“Please keep your eyes on the road, I would like to make it home alive.”

She didn’t even bother clapping back at you with some snarky comment like she usually would, her hand snaking from the gearshift to your thigh, giving a light squeeze, her gaze straight ahead, a nervous sigh fell from your lips as you focused on the trees flying past you.

“My dad won his latest custody appeal.”

You took the complete silence that followed your statement as an invite to carry on,

“Which means, I now have to spend weekends at his place.”

Jungeun slowly nodded her head as she processed the news, you took her eyebrows furrowing as a bad sign,

“Which is, as you know, the last place I ever want to be. But he convinced the judge that he is a brand-new man, three years sober and with an actual job in a garage downtown.”

The older girl seemed to know where this was heading as her fingers intertwined with yours, her thumb rubbing small circles on the back of your hand,

“Only one of those two statements is true, I’m sure you can guess which.”

As you turned into Jungeun’s driveway the car came to a stop, unfastening her seatbelt she turned to face you, her thumb reaching to wipe away a tear you didn’t even know was there.

“Y/n why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

Biting at your lip, you couldn’t seem to find a plausible answer to that very easy question, you were scared to look into her sweet eyes as the silence around you became almost suffocating.

“I’m not angry babe, I just wished you would have told me, I’m sure my mom could help us figure something out, y/n you can’t stay at that place if it isn’t safe, please, don’t do this to yourself. If something happened to you I...”

Tears started falling from your eyes as you felt the concern oozing from every pore of her body, not being able to stand seeing you like this, Jungeun pulled her seat back as you took the invitation to climb onto her lap, small sobs rattling through your body, one of her hands started rubbing comforting circles on your back, the other pulling your head even closer to her as she kissed every inch of you she could reach.

“I don’t want you to be scared y/n, I promise we’ll figure this out, together.”

#kpop scenarios #wlw #lesbian imagines #wlw scenarios #kpop trash #girl group scenarios #kpop girl groups scenarios #kpop oneshots #kpop idols #kim lip #kim lip scenario #loona #loona headcanon #loona scenarios #dreamcatcher scenarios #siyeon #chuu

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vmfx · 4 years ago

Text

YOU NEVER FORGET YOUR FIRST TIME.

We arrive at William Floyd High in the nighttime as the entire Brentwood wrestling team stepped off the bus. We enter through those front doors walking past the usual itinerary of granite floors, glass windows, metal lockers, trophy displays, plaques, and various achievements and group photos of people our age that we didn’t know. That was always the case when traveling with the team to any foreign-to-us high-school because we were only used to seeing our own halls and friends every day but most of us never cared to think about what kind of lives the kids from other schools lead.

Line up, enter the locker room. Drop your duffel bags onto the wooden bench, get undressed to the zeros. Throw your apparel in the locker. Don’t smile. Line up again, walk to the scale, step right up, tack up your weight, step off. Proceed to unlock your apparel to get dressed. Put your singlet on, your team jacket, your team pants, your wrestling shoes, hold onto your headgear, and then eat since your weight has been certified to the last pound right before you would qualify up to the heavier weight classes. Don’t smile. Now huddle as a team so the coach gives you a run-down of what to expect. Warm up, jump around, pace it. Keep moving, shoot and snap a little. Break a sweat, get pumped up, put your game-face or ego on, and wait in the hall until the team proceeds to the opponent’s gymnasium.

Five minutes before we head to the gym, I find out that our teammate Grillo was given an opportunity to wrestle a female, an extreme anomaly in the world of high-school wrestling since it’s a boy’s sport. Grillo ultimately turned down the chance to wrestle her. Why? Was it because he would feel guilty in roughing up a woman? No. Was it because he preferred the challenge of a male opponent since his perception of a wrestler of the opposite sex would be weak? No.

Grillo didn’t want to take the chance in losing against her. He didn’t want to put his supposed manhood on the line to deal with the ridicule from now until the end of high-school. He didn’t seem right about it. He had every right to turn her down. It wasn’t the only time this season one of our guys couldn’t wrestle an available female opponent. Another teammate, Pud, was upset because his pulled out at the last minute: she was having her period.

But one man’s failure is another man’s opportunity. As Grillo passed up an opportunity to experience something notable to tell his future children or his closest drinking buddies, lo and behold, our coach instead gives me the opportunity to wrestle her.

Of course, I said yes.

**********

The junior varsity string lined up at the entrance of the William Floyd Colonials’ gym as we said “Our Father”. We were given the signal to storm right on through the gym, onto the mat running in circles and closing in to the center, exploding in a battle cry of “BRENTWOOD!”. We now take our seats waiting for our junior varsity (read “exhibition”) matches to begin. A none-too-shabby well-lit gymnasium of pale-colored walls, championship banners, one huge wrestling mat squared center, and wooden benches somewhat occupied by friends, parents, family, students, and tiny clusters of girls huddling close to each other checking out their latest wrestler crushes like they’d be no big deal next month.

Four matches into the night, my teammates tapped me on the shoulder to get my attention. They point to my opponent from across the gym on the Colonials’ side warming up to get ready. Short straight black neck-length hair, darker skin, full-figured build, thick but not fat nor muscular, and buxom. It was her all right. At that moment I knew, and the team knew, that we were in for something quite the un-ordinary.

91, 98, 106, 111, 118, 126, 132, 137. They all came and went. One after another, shake hands with the enemy and at the sound of the referee’s whistle they clashed. Wrestlers coming towards each other as Aries rams locking horns together, roughing each other up in hopes of putting the other man on his back. They were cheered on, whistled to, and yelled at by the coaches if they couldn’t put the hurt on their opponents like they were supposed to. But our second string team did pretty good so far. Some went for the pin, some won by points. For six minutes or less we played hard. At the end, both wrestlers came to the center, shook hands, and the ref- raises the winner’s arm in victory. Clock out and come back on the bench. You’re done for the night.

145. My number’s up. It’s the moment I have been waiting for. After skipping and shooting in place, I step to the mat and get ready. My team stands behind me to wish me good luck, patting me on the back. I walk up to the center of the mat and here she is waiting for me in a mild green and yellow singlet with a white t-shirt under it to prevent any distraction. We meet and hastily shake hands in good sportsmanship. We stance. We lock eyes. The referee’s whistle blows. Go!

First period. I shoot for her legs and tackle her. I get right to work in trying to pin her but she flips over on her stomach as I am on top of her trying to turn her back over. The referee whistles on us for stalling and we’re back up again in stance. Whistle blows. We lock up. She takes me down and is on top of me as I turn flat on my stomach. I successfully get out of position and we’re up again. After two minutes of rough and tussle, octopus arms, twists and knots the period ends.

For those first two minutes I didn’t grapple with the usual muscle, bones, sweat, vitamins, minerals, whole milk, egg yolks, and hard-knock rough-housing of wrestling a male opponent. This time I was feeling something more soft, tender and meaty; something more chewy and warm. It was the first (non-sexual) full-body contact I ever had with the opposite sex, despite the fact that it took place on a wrestling mat in a high-school gymnasium surrounded by two teams, sports personnel, and various other community bit players. No matter. Something still had to be accomplished. Contrary to what my teammates thought, I wasn’t here to get her phone number or ask her out. I was here to win.

Second period. Whistle blows. Our heads rest upon each other as we lock eyes. Both of us try to make a go for it, tapping and pushing each other for the fake out. I shoot and I go for the fireman’s carry where I grab her arm with one hand and my other free arm goes under her triangle and grabs her leg. I surge forward. I nailed it. I tackle her down on the mat. She is on her back as I am on top of her, perpendicular and stomach-to-stomach. My left arm is secured under her head and my right arm hoists her right leg in the air. For the next few seconds she is struggling to break free but the referee on his knees blows the whistle and pounds his hand on the mat, I get the pin.

We get up to brush ourselves off. We walked to the center of the mat to happily respectfully shake hands in good sportsman- / sportswoman-like conduct. The referee raises my arm in victory. My teammates and coaches smile and pat me on the back to congratulate me. Even better, this was my very first career win. History was made.

**********

“Did you touch her crotch?” “Did you cop a feel?” “Did you get on top of her?” “Did you go hard?” Those were the post-interview questions asked to me by the jack-ass male dominate jocks on my team; joking and laughing with me as they wondered how it felt in having to enjoy full body contact with a female opponent. Those same questions would also be asked by my classmates, co-workers, and future would-be people in my life should any conversation I have ever get to this point.

“Why didn’t you go all three periods with her?” one of my teammates asked me. Good point, because maybe I should have gone the whole three rounds with her and get my money’s worth for you. Perhaps I should have enjoyed myself more since this was the only time in my life I would have this opportunity but I was too busy going for the win. Maybe next time.

Later that night, the first-string varsity team easily chopped down the Colonials to shame. Another win for the Indians. Call it a night, we’re going home.

**********

The team gathered their belongings to leave William Floyd High and hopped on the bus. As an added bonus, since we won our bout, we were allowed to be in a good mood hurling insults and mama jokes at each other like all good civilized model student athletes that we were. That night, the back of the bus on the way home was rowdier than a Texas bar in the lawless 1880’s full of booze, poker, gun violence, and burlesque women. They made me the hero of the day I didn’t ask for.

What my teammate Grillo could have had was instead given to me for keeps no matter what and I could show this to any of my friends for the rest of my life. However, when straight, narrow, easily-fascinated minds are still trained on the notion that wrestling is an all-male sport, I can mention that in high-school that I wrestled a female. They won’t light up to the idea that females can wrestle in an all-male sport because they want to accomplish something and break gender barriers. Rather, they will light up only because in their minds they hear that I felt a girl.

#VMFX #writers on Tumblr #Long Island #personal #WTF #sports

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lunatens · 6 years ago

Text

pepper partners

part 1/?

word count: 1722

genre: fluff

pairing: reader x johnny (minor ten x jaehyun on the side)

summary: you weren’t planning on joining your high school’s co-ed volleyball team, but when you find out the one and only johnny seo is playing, you can’t help but be grateful ten was able to convince you to join afterall.

~~~

you jolt awake to the familiar yet unpleasant tune of your alarm blaring from your phone, which is sitting on your bedside table. you reach over blindly to turn it off, taking a moment to lie in the darkness. you groan and rub your hands over your face, wondering why you ever thought joining the co-ed volleyball team was a good idea--if your best friend, ten, hadn't bribed you with the promise of rides to and from school every day for the rest of the year, you probably wouldn't have joined. you roll over and check your phone, noticing 3 missed calls from ten. you sigh, holding the phone to your ear and calling him back while you slide out of bed and make your way to the light switch. after a few rings, he finally picks up.

"y/n!!! you better be ready to go!! i'm coming to get you in five minutes." his voice (way too loud for this time in the morning) bursts into your ear. you hold your phone out to the side a little in an effort to save your eardrums, squinting as you flick on the light.

"what?? i thought you said we were leaving at 6:45! i'm still in my pajamas, ten!" you reply--you were expecting at least another 15 minutes to get ready.

"well, i changed my mind. we're going early. a little birdie--taeyong--told me that that cutie jaehyun is playing this year, and i NEED to see that boy asap. plus, he's friends with that tall kid you like--maybe he's playing too! all the more reason to go. EARLY."

"first of all, i'm pretty sure jaehyun doesn't know you exist. second of all, for the millionth time, I DON'T LIKE ANYONE! all i said was the tall kid from our english class is cute. that does NOT mean i like him, ten. and third of all--fine, we can go early. but only if you pick up lisa too."

"okay, FIRST of all...you don't know that! and even if it's true, it's about to change. second of all, y/n, i know you, and i also sit beside you in english and can see you doodling his name all over your notes. and third of all, of course we can pick her up! see you in 5, honey!"

the phone clicks as ten hangs up. you hadn't felt nervous for practice until now, but all of a sudden butterflies begin to swarm in your stomach. you're not sure what changed, but you swallow your nerves as you pull sweatpants over your shorts and tug a hoodie on over your old t-shirt from provincial championships last season. you slide your feet into sandals and snatch your volleyball bag and your backpack--including a set of clothes to wear for the school day after practice--on your way to the kitchen. just as you're reaching into the box of granola bars, you hear a car horn beep aggressively from the driveway. you cringe as your dog, ruby, starts barking. you send ruby a death glare as you grab an apple from the fruit basket, then rush out the door and into the passenger seat of ten's car.

"took you long enough! let's roll," he says, reversing out of the driveway and making his way around the block to lisa's house. you always wonder how he has so much energy in the morning.

the rest of the short drive to school is filled with ten and lisa chattering back and forth over the radio while you press your forehead against the window and try (to no avail) to fall back asleep.

"ugh, y/n, stop being so edgy, there's cute boys awaiting!" ten says as he shakes you awake. you decide to ignore his comment, climbing out of the car and trailing behind your two friends towards the gym.

you turn down the hallway to the changeroom and see two boys talking quietly as they fill up their water bottles. your cheeks flush red as you recognize one of them as johnny from your english class.

"see you in the gym folks, i have a water bottle that needs filling--immediately." ten states as he makes a beeline for the water fountain, where you now notice jaehyun (who's been ten's hallway crush since he transferred to your school at the beginning of the semester two weeks ago) standing beside johnny. ten turns to give you a wink, before making conversation with the two boys (mostly jaehyun).

***

you and lisa walk into the gym, where small groups of people stand scattered around. you recognize pretty much everyone from either the senior girls or guys volleyball teams, although there's a couple juniors you don't know who were invited to play. ten is still chatting to jaehyun, who is smiling down at your best friend with rosy cheeks. you roll your eyes--ten never fails to catch his target. you giggle to yourself as you watch johnny stand there awkwardly as jaehyun and ten continue talking, seemingly having forgotten johnny's presence. he turns to scan the gym, and you lock eyes with him for a second before you turn to look away, cheeks even more red than before. you adjust your hair, then turn to look at the list of teams that are signed up:

team #1:

ten (LIB)

lisa (LS)

lucas (LS)

jungwoo (S)

taeyong (RS/captain)

y/n (MB)

doyoung (MB)

team #2

chuu (LIB)

jaehyun (LS)

yves (LS)

mark (S)

rose (RS)

johnny (MB/captain)

yuta (MB)

team #3

jaemin (LIB)

jeno (LS)

haechan (LS)

yeojin (S)

renjun (RS)

olivia (MB/captain)

jisung (MB)

you and lisa chat for a bit about the lineups, excited to get started, until coach lee blows his whistle. everyone in the gym hustles over to where he's standing by the net, silently waiting in excitement and anticipation for the beginning of the season.

"alright, welcome to the first day of co-ed volleyball! you all finally pestered principal kim enough to let us have a team, so here we are. seniors, good to see your faces again--welcome to a couple of our new players, jaehyun and rose, we're excited to have you. juniors, even though you're not gonna be in the final cut for the team, i hope you still have fun while you're here. you all will be in these three teams for the next month for any team-based drills we do, and for games we play at the end of practice. i hope you can all still bond with each other on the court and off the court, as at the end of the month, i'll be choosing 10 of you to take to the championships. so you'd best show me what you've got! let's get started; warm up with some pepper in partners."

coach lee blows the whistle, and everyone scatters, grasping at their nearest friend. you spy ten and jaehyun joined at the hip as they go to get a ball, leaving johnny behind. johnny smirks and rolls his eyes as his friend walks away with yours, then turns awkwardly looking around the gym, rubbing the back of his neck and biting his lip. you feel lisa nudge you from behind.

"go, silly! now's your chance!" she whispers eagerly.

"no! then you won't have a partner!" you whine in response.

"pshhh, i'll be fine! that new girl needs a partner anyways, i'll join her." lisa says as she jogs over to rose.

you hear a gentle cough from behind you, and you turn around to see johnny standing there with a ball.

"do you, uh, have a partner? mine kinda ditched me, haha," he says, looking over to where ten and jaehyun are warming up together.

"you do now! sorry about ten, he's pretty social." you respond, surprised at how calm you are in the face of possibly the cutest boy you've ever seen. johnny laughs, and motions for you to follow him to the other side of the court.

"i'm johnny--i think you're in my english class?" he says; you're surprised he noticed you.

"yeah! i'm y/n, it's nice to officially meet you, johnny." you say, sticking your hand out. johnny shakes it, a warm smile growing on his face.

***

the rest of the practice flies by; mostly it's just basic drills to get everyone back into the rhythm. any time there's a partner drill, your heart flutters as johnny immediately turns to you (one time, ten sees and sticks his tongue out at you then gives you a thumbs up). before you know it, practice is over and you're doing cool down stretches. you and lisa go to find ten; you spot him sitting on the bench beside jaehyun. the two boys have their phones out--honestly, you aren't even surprised ten's got his number already.

"ten! let's go!" you call to him.

"one second, y/n!" he replies, turning back to jaehyun quickly before jogging over to you, a smug look on his face.

"guess who has a movie date for friday night," he boasts.

"ooh, are you going to see the new spiderman movie? i hear it's really good," you ask. before ten can reply you hear a deep voice from behind you.

"are you guys talking about the new spiderman movie? i've heard it's fantastic!" johnny pipes in.

"well, you can come with us on friday! be there or be square, i'll pick you up at 6," ten replies.

"cool, i can't wait!" johnny says, making eye contact with you the whole time. "see you in english!" he says, running off to meet up with jaehyun.

you turn to ten.

"what are you doing??" you question.

"setting you up with the love of your life, DUH" he responds.

"he probably just wants to see the movie with his friends! i don't know if he wants me there. plus, won't it be awkward with you and jaehyun on a literal date?"

"oh y/n, sometimes you can be so blind. trust me, it'll be fine. you guys'll practically be on your own date!" he gives you a look that says 'you don't have a choice in this'.

"fine," you agree. the three of you leave the gym and hit the changerooms, and although you won't admit it to ten, you've already started counting down the hours til friday.

~~~

ahhh!! here’s my first series!!! i’m not sure if anyone will find this interesting, but i’m planning on continuing it at least for a little bit. i’d love to hear people’s thoughts/feedback!! or suggestions/requests/ideas!! <3 hopefully the volleyball parts will make sense to people even if you don’t play

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megaphonemonday · 7 years ago

Note

Mega Mama: love all of your Bawson fics. Would love a Hallmark style prompt of Ginny moving to a quaint small town and renovating a charming little house. Her cantankerous contractor is none other than Mike Lawson who once hosted a renovation show with now ex wife Rachel. Money pit style calamities and hilarious mishaps and of course the budding romance. Has been on my mind for a while, I'm just not a writer. Please and greatly appreciated:

oh man, i love me some hgtv, so why the heck not? (also, thanks for trusting me with this! i hope you like it!)

i’m ignoring the near-impossibility of a single, recently graduated person actually buying their own home let alone having the money available to renovate it. Millennials aren’t killing the housing market in this fic 😉

handyman special | ao3

Ginny Baker did not run from her problems.

(Did she give up when the Varsity baseball coach didn’t want her on the team or did she show up every day of try outs and prove she was just as good as the boys? Not that showing up every day actually got her on the team, but still. The point stood, okay?)

If it seemed like that was exactly what she was doing by breaking up with her boyfriend of three years the evening he proposed and moving all the way across the country, well, that was just a matter of perspective, wasn’t it?

Her mother called it a disaster waiting to happen.

Personally, Ginny preferred to think of it as moving on. Making a fresh start. Realizing her very own Manifest Destiny.

Just with way less dysentery and genocide.

She didn’t mean to snort at her own joke, but it wasn’t like Ginny’d been spoiling for laughs lately. And, really. What else did she expect with what she’d gotten herself into? There wasn’t a lot to laugh about at the moment.

Or anyone to laugh with, for that matter. It was—to be fair, not unexpectedly—difficult to make friends in a small town like this, and Ginny hadn’t made any inroads on that front. And that was the least of her problems.

There were no fewer than seven voicemails waiting on her phone—though it was a toss up as to whether her mother or Trevor had left more. She’d been living out of her carry on the past week, both her checked bags having been misplaced by the airline. The air mattress she slept on definitely had a leak somewhere because no matter how full Ginny made sure it was before she went to bed or how many duct tape patches she applied, she kept waking up with her shoulder and hip digging into the hard floor.

Which was only happening because Ginny’d checked out of the tiny motel after she bought the house to cut down on costs.

Because, oh yeah, three days into what was supposed to be an extended vacation in a small, California beach town to get her head on straight, Ginny had somehow bought a house. Like, an entire house. An entire house in desperate need of renovation.

(She’d spent the first two days doing nothing but lounging on the sand and wading into the warm water of the Pacific. Ginny had hoped that the waves would wash away some of her worries, but she’d never been that good at waiting around, hoping for the best.

So, she always went looking for it.

Which was what propelled her into exploring the sleepy little town, and what led her straight to the wind-scoured, long-neglected bungalow with a “For Sale” sign in the yard.

That no one would classify her house as the best of anything was undisputed, but Ginny liked it, and that was what mattered.)

Friends (and hopefully the rest of her stuff) would come. This house thing she needed to sort out pretty immediately. She couldn’t keep brushing her teeth with bottled water because the bathroom sink emitted something that was alarmingly brown. She couldn’t keep surviving on sandwiches from the beachside coffee shop down the road. Cara the barista was beginning to look concerned for her dietary choices. It wasn’t Ginny’s fault that every time she used the microwave, all the lights in the house flickered ominously.

And she really couldn’t keep sleeping on that goddamn air mattress.

Clearly, Ginny had bigger problems on her hands than a lack of friends. Anyway, it wasn’t like she’d really been swimming in friends back in North Carolina. The only thing keeping her there was her family and Trevor. And Trevor’d always been more interested in being her boyfriend than her friend.

Now that she thought about it, Ginny actually couldn’t imagine him being just her friend.

Maybe if he had been, if he’d been satisfied with just her friendship the way she’d initially wanted, she’d feel guiltier now about leaving him behind.

But she didn’t. She was happy to be in California. Excited to start a new life.

A new life that required a new house she could actually live in.

Which was exactly where the grumpy, bearded man currently frowning at, well, everything in Ginny’s newly acquired bungalow came in.

Ginny had a hard time imagining him ever being her friend, too.

Which was fine. It was fine! She couldn’t imagine his social life was particularly fulfilling, anyway. Not if he went around frowning like that at everyone he met.

Who cared that the sight of him at her door had kindled something dangerously close to interest? And not just friendly interest, either. With his chest testing the limits of the seams on his worn in flannel and his backwards ball cap, what else could it be? Ginny was only human, okay? And it’d been a long time since she’d let herself notice other men. By all appearances, this guy wasn’t a bad place to start.

Too bad appearances could be so deceiving.

Given the way he hadn’t spoken more than fifteen words to her in the half hour he’d been here, too busy judging her house and clearly finding it lacking, that initial burst of attraction quickly fizzled without anything more to fuel it.

(It’d been a close call when he bent over to inspect an outlet, though.)

No. Mike Lawson certainly wouldn’t be one of her new friends. But maybe he could be her contractor.

He didn’t even bat an eye at Ginny’s snort, just continued scribbling things down in his worn notebook as he prowled around the mostly empty house. There was just Ginny’s one small suitcase, a cheap desk lamp, and her makeshift bed for him to avoid. The few dishes and flatware she’d picked up were tucked away in the kitchen cabinets, but once it became clear the house needed the kind of work Ginny’s high school shop class wouldn’t cover, she figured she’d wait to get anything else. What was the point in blowing a bunch of money that could be put to better use on renovations?

So the rest of the house was bare, showing off the well-worn hardwood floors, freshly painted walls, and bright shafts of sunlight filtering in through the stained glass in the bay window.

Ginny forced herself to focus on these things, trying to figure out how they would come together once the warm afternoon light spilled across furniture and rugs rather than naked floorboards. Better that than trailing after the unfairly good looking man in her house. He hadn’t appreciated any of her attempts at small talk; following him around silently was just creepy.

She’d have to wait for his final assessment.

But not long, thankfully.

Mr. Lawson—he hadn’t corrected her when she greeted him at the door, and Ginny was nothing if not a good Southern girl, manners and all—came out of the small, out of date bathroom, finished making the last of his notes, and blew out a long breath that didn’t do much for Ginny’s confidence.

“What’s the verdict?” she asked, rising from the window seat and trying to manage her expectations.

Mr. Lawson glanced up from his notepad, lips quirked almost charmingly to the side. Before Ginny could go getting any ideas about rekindling any interest, though, he had to go and ruin it.

“You think there’s any chance the bank hasn’t processed your down payment yet?”

She blinked, sure she’d misheard him. “Excuse me?”

“This place is a disaster,” he said, blunt. “I’m surprised there was an inspector alive who let it go on the market like this. ”

Ginny glanced around. Was he seeing what she was? Did he not see the lovely built ins or the back porch that practically ran up against the beach? Sure, there was a long crack running up one of the walls and any time she ran the tap for more than a few seconds, the pipes made a distressing groan, but those things could be fixed. It was his job to fix them.

“So it needs some rehab,” she said, feeling absurdly defensive and protective of this house for all she’d lived in it less than a week.

He snorted and rolled his eyes. “That’s one way of putting it.” Ginny opened her mouth to protest, but he cut her off. “You said this place was built in the 30s, right? It hasn’t had any significant work done on it since then. It’s falling apart. There are definitely leaks in the roof, the pipes are probably still lead, I’d be shocked if there weren’t asbestos in the insulation, and who knows what kind of shape the wiring’s in.”

Ginny just stared at him, feeling the indignation really settle in.

Whether or not Mr. Lawson sensed this was unclear, but he sighed and took on a slightly more conciliatory tone. “Look,” he said, “you called me in for a professional opinion, right? Well, in my professional opinion, you should get out of here as soon as possible. You’re not the first person to take this place on and I’m guessing you won’t be the last. Do yourself a favor: pawn this place off on someone who can handle it.”

That was all it took to harden Ginny’s general annoyance into fury. Who the hell did this guy think he was?

“I can handle it,” she bit out coldly, jutting her chin into the air and staring down the asshole.

She almost couldn’t believe she still wanted to hire him. It wasn’t like she was really spoiled for choice, though. She knew exactly three people in town: her barista, her realtor, and this guy.

“If you could handle it,” he replied, condescending amusement coloring his words and overriding any pleasure Ginny might get out of seeing his big arms cross over his chest, “I wouldn’t be here.”

God, how did he manage to get any clients with an attitude like that?

“If you only take clients who are capable of doing the work themselves, I have to wonder how you stay in business,” she snapped. He could try and convince her to give up on this project all he wanted, it was only going to make Ginny more determined to see it through. This was her house; it was going to be her home. Whether Mike Lawson liked it or not. “I’m well aware that this project requires a professional, which is why I called you in. But if you don’t think you’re up for the challenge, I’m sure I can find another contractor who is.”

It didn’t matter that Ginny had no idea where to even begin looking for another contractor. Her real estate agent had recommended Lawson Restoration Services when she made her offer, said they were the best in town. (Ha. They were probably the only ones in town.) And while Ginny’d been inclined to trust Evelyn Sanders’ judgment, perhaps she needed to reassess that impulse if this was what it got her.

Across the room, Mr. Lawson’s eyes narrowed. Ginny could practically hear his teeth grind in annoyance. Good. He’d been enough of a pain in her ass, he could deal with a little payback.

At her smirk, he just shook his head and huffed, rolling his eyes to the ceiling like he couldn’t quite believe what he was about to say. “If you’re serious, then I’m in.”

Ginny didn’t let herself second-guess him. Instead, she stepped forward and held out her hand. After a long moment, he gave in and shook, looking like he was already regretting his decision.

She just smiled, pleased to have gotten her way. “Then it sounds like we have a deal, Mr. Lawson.”

The greatest things about being self-employed and mostly working from home were that Ginny could set her own schedule, count everything in her closet as business-appropriate, and avoid dealing with coworkers prying into her personal life because she didn’t have any.

(She could also move all the way across the country without worrying about finding a new job when she settled in, but she liked to think that one had limited usefulness.)

In North Carolina, those had been unequivocal pros.

Here in California, where Ginny’s house was constantly occupied by a small circus of workers and their prickly—still! After three whole weeks seeing each other every day—ringleader, it was more of a mixed bag.

Sleeping in was off the table when a chorus of hammers and drills and buzz saws started every day promptly at 8:00 AM. Similarly, pants were no longer optional with a team of strange men swarming her house.

Ginny couldn’t decide which she missed more.

She couldn’t even really work from home. Not when her home-to-be was an active construction scene with no internet. Lawson had actually laughed in her face when she floated the idea of getting a wireless connection set up right away. Laughed and laughed and laughed until she gave up and walked away. Ginny’d managed to switch everything around in his tool belt so he kept coming up with the wrong thing in retaliation, but he figured it out too fast for it to be really satisfying.

Sometimes, she set up shop on the beach just beyond her back door. It was nice to be on hand if Lawson needed to run something by her, and even better to watch the project progress. More often, though, Ginny'd walk down the street to the coffee shop to hang out with Cara, listen to gossip about people she mostly didn’t know, and use the wifi when necessary. Which was basically all the time. Such was the glamorous life of a web designer.

Both got her out from underfoot, which was the important thing. Ginny had always considered herself a fairly handy person. Her pop had made sure she knew how to fix a leaking pipe and change a flat tire just as well as she could throw a screwball. Watching the crew tear apart the bungalow and slowly piece it back together, though, she was uncomfortably aware that nothing her pop had taught her could’ve prepared her for this.

Sometimes, when she needed a break from tweaking layouts for clients, she’d scroll through the (massive and still growing) folder of photos titled “neverending construction” just to reassure herself that things were actually getting done. Progress had been made.

So Ginny continued to document that progress and tried to learn as much as possible as she went. At least once a week, she spent some of the day drifting through the wreckage of her house and snapping more pictures than she had since her time on the school newspaper. It was nice. Even if Ginny learned early on to make sure Lawson was unaware if he happened to be in the shot. Not only did he frown less when he didn’t know he was being watched, he couldn’t complain about what he didn’t know was happening.

Which, of course, didn’t keep him from grumbling about Ginny distracting his guys from their jobs.

On the bright side, she was definitely meeting people.

There was Salvamini, who surfed on his lunch breaks in spite of Dusty’s conviction that sharks would get him one day. Livan had a dangerous smile, but a love of cilantro Ginny could not abide. Omar was shy, but sweet, while Sonny, Butch, and Javanes hid most of their sweetness beneath many, many layers of ego. Blip, the construction manager, was apparently married to her realtor, which certainly explained Evelyn’s recommendation.

There were more of them, too, a largely friendly gaggle of dudes who cycled in and out, taking away bits and pieces of the house and leaving behind fresh drywall and newly finished floors. They seemed to like her well enough, and not just because she fed them pizza and beer on Friday evenings.

The only one Ginny still couldn’t get a solid read on was their grouch of a boss. Lawson was the only one who was on site every day, and he was the only one Ginny hadn’t managed to learn anything about. She thought he found her amusing more than annoying, which was something.

In her head, and whenever she had occasion to say it out loud, she’d finally dropped the “Mr.” off his name, but only because the entire crew burst into laughter the first time they heard her call him Mr. Lawson. She couldn’t bring herself to call him just Mike the way everyone else did. Not when he was still mostly a mystery.

Which worked well enough for them. They were mostly content to leave each other be: Lawson to his work and Ginny to hers.

Still, sometimes Lawson’s work meant they had to meet in the middle.

“Hey, you got a minute?”

Ginny paused in slipping on her headphones and backpedaled to the Mission Control Center—which was really just a card table strewn with blueprints in what would be the dining room—where Lawson oversaw and planned everything. (Some nights, after the guys had long gone home and the house was quiet, Ginny’d flip through the papers, trying to make out his scrawl and see how much of it made any sense. It usually wasn’t much, but she was getting better at deciphering his handwriting.) She’d just come in to change for a run, but that could wait. She’d been running a lot lately, both to blow off steam and because it was her only way to explore town. God, she missed her truck. The only reason she’d wanted to go now was because she couldn’t stare at her computer screen or the ridiculous doggy haute couture store she was supposed to build for another second.

“What’s up?”

“Just wanted to make sure I can send the drywallers home.”

“Why couldn’t you?”

Lawson rolled his eyes and Ginny only just managed not to roll hers right back.

“If you suddenly decided you wanted to knock down the wall between the bedrooms, that’d probably stop me.”

“Oh.” Ginny thought it over for a moment, but didn’t see much of a point in it. “Uh, no. No walls to knock down.”

Lawson snorted, but it wasn’t quite as derisive as it usually was. “What, you don’t wanna go fully open concept with this place?”

Honestly, Ginny didn’t even know what that meant. HGTV hadn’t ever been all that high on her watch list. She said so and Lawson laughed again, for real this time.

It did nice things to his face, making his eyes crinkle and cheeks round. Not that Ginny cared about any of that. Or the way he licked his lips before replying.

“You’re not missing out on much,” he promised, shaking his head.

“If you say so.” She shrugged and considered the original question. “I guess you can send the drywallers home, then.”

“Livan will be so disappointed,” he drawled.

Was it just Ginny, or was there a hint of something in that observation? An edge, perhaps?

One way to find out.

“Well, it’s not like he doesn’t know where to find me.”

Lawson rolled his eyes again, which didn’t give her any answers. That was pretty much his go to response for, now that Ginny thought about it, everything. “I don’t think even he’d go so far as to stalk you, Ms. Baker.”

Ginny’s nose wrinkled, though not at the mention of stalking. Ms. Baker? Really? After all this time? He hadn’t been Mr. Lawson in weeks. Still, she didn’t bother correcting him.

All this renovation stuff would be over soon, and they’d never see each other again. Sure, the process of repairing the foundation had taken longer than initially planned and all the insulation had to be replaced along with most of the plumbing and the entire roof—to his credit, Lawson never said anything about having predicted these exact problems, but Ginny was sure he’d thought it at least once—but it seemed like it was all coming to an end. It’d been weeks since she last saw the exposed studs of a wall. The house actually felt like a house again.

Rather than say any of that, though, Ginny just shrugged. “If he does, I know who to blame.”

Lawson waved her off with a huff. “Go on your run, then, and get outta my way.”

Ginny did as he asked, but she stuck her tongue out as she went, and Lawson’s laugh echoed in her ears all through her run.

The first morning Ginny wasn’t woken up by the chorus of nail guns or the steady drone of a circular saw, she lay on her semi-deflated air mattress and tried not to think how strange her life had become. Here she was, hardly two years out of school, living in a largely unfurnished house some 2,500 miles away from the town she’d lived all her life. 2,500 miles away from the people she’d known all her life.

And honestly, she couldn’t be happier. Last, week, after Lawson practically threw her out of the house, saying she couldn’t sleep there with all the varnish fumes that came with finishing the floors and baseboards, she’d gone home. Well, back to North Carolina, at least. Mostly so she could reassure Will and her mom that she hadn’t been inducted into a cult the way they seemed to think.

She made it 38 hours in Tarboro before loading up her truck, which had been once been her pop’s, and hitting the road for California. And why should she stay? She’d seen everyone who mattered.

Trevor, she hadn’t heard from at all.

Which, she supposed, wasn’t the worst thing in the world.

The drive across country had been a little lonely, and by the end of it Ginny was happy to be back in her sleepy seaside town. Happy to be back in her—every day less and less—ramshackle house. Happy to go to sleep on her halfhearted air mattress. (Though she was less happy to be waking up in it now.)

She’d almost been happy to see Lawson’s grumpy, bearded face, even.

Which, of course, was just perfect since he was officially done being her contractor.

Between the foundation repair and plumbing issues, not to mention the almost entirely new roof, there hadn’t been enough money for Ginny to justify paying a whole team of guys to sand and paint and seal and otherwise turn the house from a construction project into a home.

She’d been so sure she could take it on, but now, in the cold light of morning, Ginny was beginning to have some very serious doubts.

As she’d had occasion to find out over the past six weeks, web design and interior design were two very different ballgames. Sure, there were some similarities: a general attention to aesthetics and detail, but the implementation couldn’t be more different. Where a few keystrokes and commands were all it took to get a website in working order. Restoring and decorating a house required actual heavy lifting.

Naturally, it was something of a daunting task, and Ginny told herself she was just easing herself into it slowly. So slowly, she wasn’t even getting out of bed yet.

She had felt so eager to take on the challenge, anticipation ratcheting up as workers she’d gotten to know over the past few months began to disappear in ones and twos, off to work on other projects. Soon enough, only Lawson was left, finishing up with the tile in the kitchen and the bathroom, sanding down the last rough edges.

Just last evening, all his work finished up, he’d handed over his spare set of keys and told her, “Well, Baker. It’s all on you now.” If he said it with more than a bit of trepidation in his voice, Ginny thought it was at least a little bit of a joke.

She was about 75% sure.

The remaining 25% was a certainty that he was worried she would either manage to kill herself or pull all his hard work down around her ears.

Which was progress where she and Lawson were concerned. It wasn’t so long ago Ginny would’ve been completely offended by his lack of faith and determined to prove him wrong. Now, she was just determined to prove him wrong.

Honestly, she thought Lawson’s snobbery was mostly funny, though that might have been nostalgia talking; it was strange to be in the house all by herself. He’d been so scandalized when she mentioned she had no idea how to refinish cabinets, but was sure the internet would help her out.

The internet always knew what to do. Even—especially—when she didn’t.

He’d grumbled when she laughed, but only said she wasn’t allowed to tell anyone he’d worked on the house if she ended up ruining it.

With that taunt bolstering her resolve, Ginny rolled out of her deflating bed and one question answered itself easily enough.

This mattress? Yeah, it had to go. It had never been all that good at it’s intended purpose, but Ginny was increasingly sure that if she tried to force the issue, her sad, second-hand air mattress would give up on retaining air altogether. She needed to get a real bed and a real mattress as soon as possible. And if, in the process, she created a real bedroom rather than just the place where she passed out every night, Ginny wouldn’t complain.

It would be nice to have some place to come back to at the end of the day that didn’t do such a good impression of a squatter’s nest.

Which was how, hours later and verging on exhaustion, Ginny found herself standing in the middle of the hardware store’s paint aisle, contemplating the difference between Fuzzy Duckling and Smiley Face. Was there one? And what the hell was greige?

She was still frowning at the mind-boggling array of paint samples when someone interrupted with a gruff, “Excuse me.”

“Sorry,” Ginny replied automatically, stepping out of the middle of the aisle, and checking over her shoulder to make sure there was enough room for their heavily loaded cart to get by. It was then that she noticed who was pushing the cart. “Oh. Hi.”

Mike Lawson paused and actually took her in. Ginny did the same, not that she’d had a chance to forget any important details in the past 12 hours. His beard was the same as ever, thick and dark and framing his mouth in a way that wasn’t intriguing. His flannel was the one he’d worn pretty much every Thursday of their acquaintance, the blue and gray one that sometimes strained around his arms when he lifted something heavy. His wry smile, once recognition lit in his eyes, was the one he always gave when he found her particularly amusing.

“Didn’t I just finish with you?” he asked in lieu of a real greeting.

“You might have moved on to bigger and better things, Lawson, but my little house still needs some work.”

“That’s putting it lightly.” The corners of his mouth tugged, like he wanted to grin. Ginny couldn’t say why he didn’t.

“Says the man who left it in such shambles.”

He rolled his eyes, but didn’t protest. He’d offered to work out some kind of payment plan to get some more work done, but Ginny was actually looking forward to the challenge of doing this herself.

“And you decided to get right to it, huh?”

“What else was I supposed to do?”

He laughed and that little flutter of pride that came every time she managed to startle that sound out of him woke up in Ginny’s stomach. In the beginning, it’d always been a shock that her forbidding contractor was even capable of laughing. As they got to know each other, though, Ginny came to realize Mike’s sense of humor was very much alive. He laughed all the time. At her stupid Laffy Taffy jokes, at Blip’s stories of his twins and the intrigues of the second grade, at his guys almost constantly. Though that was generally at their expense in a way this laugh wasn’t.

“Don’t know why I’m surprised,” he said with a rueful shake of his head before turning to face the wall of paint chips Ginny’d been eyeing. “If you want my two cents, don’t go too dark in the dining room; there’s not enough light. Test out a few of the sample cans and see what you like, though.”

“So you’re a designer now, too?” Ginny teased, more familiar than she ever would’ve imagined during that first meeting.

Something flickered across Mike’s face and the smile he offered her was tight. “Something like that. I’ll leave you to it.”

He didn’t even give her a chance to demand a better answer, instead walking up to the cash register, pausing to pay, and then heading out the door.

All Ginny could think was something that she often found herself thinking when it came to Mike Lawson:

What the hell is his problem?

It was another few days before Ginny got around to trying out the samples she picked out. (Fortunately, none of them were Fuzzy Duckling or whatever the hell greige was.) Which wasn’t to say she hadn’t been busy. She’d driven up and down the coast in her dad’s pick up more times than she could count, scoping out estate sales and flea markets, trying to find furniture to fill the bedroom. And the rest of the house when she found the perfect dining room table and an antique carved screen she had no idea what to do with, but it was too pretty to just leave.

Sure, it would’ve been much easier to just go to the nearest Ikea, but that felt too close to cheating. The house itself would be such a labor of love, she couldn’t just fill it with the same dresser and couch combination as every college student in America.

So, she waded through heaps and piles of junk, hoping to find a few things that spoke to her, or whatever.

Okay, maybe she’d been watching some HGTV in her spare time, or at least had it on in the background as she coded. Ginny was relatively sure her intention—gaining a few interior design instincta purely through osmosis—had been largely unsuccessful, but she’d definitely picked up on the lingo.

Things like window treatments and wood finishes spoke to her now. She had opinions on chair rails and subway tile. Barn doors were beyond over done, but she kind of liked them anyway. And if Ginny never heard anyone say the words man cave again, she would gladly sacrifice her soul to whatever kind god was looking down on her.

And yet, she still found herself cuing up another episode of House Hunters to play in the background as she finally tested out the three shades of blue she’d picked for her bedroom walls.

Ginny must have dropped into some kind of painting zen because the next thing she knew, she was laughing along to Mike Lawson’s familiar snark, as she swept broad swathes of her final sample, a delicate robin’s egg blue, onto one wall.

At first she didn’t realize it wasn’t actually him. She almost called out a reply, the way she had when it was only them in the house, when reality caught up to her.

Ginny blinked, shaking herself. Was she hallucinating? Had seeing him at the hardware store triggered some delayed response to how alone she was all the time now? Before Ginny could really settle in to psychoanalyze herself, another voice rang through the house.

Unless Evelyn had neglected to mention some very active ghosts in the house, Ginny was relieved to believe that her mental health was still intact.

Dropping her roller brush back in the tray, Ginny padded over to her computer, which she’d left well out of the way of the open paint cans. Thankfully, the screen was still paint free. However, the clear screen didn’t help her in figuring out what the hell was showing on it. Hulu continued to play, but that was not a good enough explanation for what she was seeing there. It took her a minute to process it, actually. It didn’t matter how long she looked, though, her brain always reached the same conclusion.

That was Mike Lawson.

Mike Lawson talking into a camera outside a construction project.

Mike Lawson on his own TV show.

What in the actual fuck?

Staring first in confusion and then amusement and back to confusion, Ginny struggled to wrap her head around the sight of him, a few years younger and a beard (and probably a few pounds, though Ginny didn’t think it did much for his appearance) lighter talking into the camera, smiling charmingly as he explained something about what he must’ve been working on.

What was even harder to wrap her head around was the pretty redhead leaning into his side.

“Y’know, I was sure Rachel’d lost her mind when she told me to save all that old flooring, but she was absolutely right. That’s why she gets to make the decisions, and I just follow orders.” He looked adoringly down at the woman beside him, who laughed, tossing her long, red hair.

“It’s true,” she said, resting her head on his shoulder and beaming straight into the camera. “I made him put that in our wedding vows.”

Automatically, Ginny paused the playback.

She blinked. Then blinked once more. She hadn’t realized Lawson was married. Then again, she didn’t actually know anything about him aside from his general disdain for open-concept living spaces and laminate flooring. Well, that and how well he got along with his crew, as both their leader and their friend. And how good his forearms looked when he had his sleeves rolled up to work the power drill—

Okay, back to the topic at hand.

The man was married.

Or had been, Ginny rationalized as she struggled to recall if she’d ever seen a wedding band in all the time she’d known him. He was definitely wearing one on screen.

She could still see it under the dark overlay announcing, “You are watching: Building Character.”

Telling herself that what she was feeling was not disappointment, not at all, Ginny pressed play again.

It wouldn’t hurt to watch a little more. Just to satisfy her curiosity. Nothing wrong with that.

Before she knew what she’d done, it was dark outside, the paint had dried out in the tray, her laptop was about to die, and Ginny had watched half a season of Building Character.

Which at least had the distinction of not being the worst name in the HGTV pantheon.

She forced herself to close Hulu’s tab and shut down her computer for good measure before plugging it in and leaving it alone for the rest of the evening.

What she did the next morning, however, was an entirely different story.

If asked, Ginny wouldn’t be proud to admit that she looked up the show’s Wikipedia article before letting herself get sucked back in the next morning, but she was curious, all right? There were worse reasons to do things. Mike Lawson did not seem like the type to get on board with being followed around by a camera crew, and she wanted to know what could possibly convince him it was a good idea.

There were no answers on that front, but she did skim over sections on the show’s premise and ratings, scrolling until she hit one titled: “Cancellation.”

It was a short paragraph, hardly even deserving of its own heading. All it said was: “Building Character was cancelled after its second season, aired in 2014, following several developments within the cast. Many speculated that its cancellation was due to competitor Bravo’s announcement of a new interior design show in development in the vein of Millionaire Matchmaker or Flipping Out, which Patrick had been tapped to headline. The series shot a pilot, which was never picked up. Patrick also filed for divorce from Lawson at this time.”

That wasn’t nearly enough information. It was hardly even information. There weren’t any sources cited, and no way to tell how true it all was.

Ginny had questions. About a million of them, actually.

(Even if her most burning one had been answered pretty definitively.)

And what better source for answers than the show in question? So, telling herself it was merely to sate her curiosity, Ginny felt only slightly weird about pulling up the next episode to play in the background as she went back to her neglected tasks from yesterday.

Ginny’s discovery left her in something of a strange, quasi-ethical quandary. At what point did she tell Lawson that she’d found his TV show? Should she even? No one on the crew had ever brought it up; he probably wasn’t trading on his semi-fame to drum up business. If he was, he definitely wasn’t doing a good job of it. Maybe Lawson just wanted to leave it in the past? If his short stint as a TV personality had ended in his divorce, there were probably some pretty bad memories tied up in it all. Ginny didn’t need to go digging that up just to sate her curiosity and soothe her vaguely guilty conscience.

And what was there to be guilty about? So what, she watched a publicly available TV show. A publicly available TV show that happened to feature someone she actually knew, but who didn’t know she’d seen his—

It was weird, okay? Just super weird.

Luckily, it was an easy enough conundrum to ignore when Ginny didn’t actually have to see the man in question. Well, not in person at least. In spite of her (more than) daily trips to the local hardware store and even striking up something of a friendship—well, Ginny was determined it would be a friendship by the time she was through—with its curmudgeon of an owner, Al, she hadn’t run into Mike Lawson again.

She thanked God that she hadn’t started her HGTV kick earlier. If she’d found the show while he was still around every day, slowly growing on her, Ginny couldn’t begin to imagine what she would’ve done. He probably would’ve ended up quitting and she would’ve been left with a real problem on her hands.

For all Ginny had actually met the man before she stumbled across his cancelled home renovation show, she wasn’t prepared to come face to face with Mike Lawson again now that she had this information. It was easier to separate them into two entirely different people: Lawson, the grumpy contractor who’d made her house technically livable and wasn’t always as big of an asshole as he’d first seemed was miles away from Mike, the TV personality who both provided Ginny with some excellent inspiration as she fumbled her way through her DIY restorations and was utterly smitten with his pretty interior designer wife.

(Well, ex-wife now.)

Of course, just because it was easier didn’t mean it would always be that way.

Or would even last that long.

A few days after stumbling on Building Character, Ginny was once again at the hardware store, ready to pick up all the paint for her house, as well as drop cloths and tape and brushes and all the other supplies the internet had told her she’d need.

She was just loading the last of her freshly mixed paint cans into her cart when a far too familiar voice drawled, just behind her, “Of all the gin joints in all the world.”

Ginny whirled, paint clattering to the bottom of her cart, a hand to her chest. “Jesus, are you stalking me?” she blurted, ignoring any irony in her accusation.

(Watching a TV show wasn’t stalking, okay? Even if she was using said TV show to glean a few personal details—

Okay, okay. She got the picture.)

Lawson squinted at her, like he wasn’t sure if she was being serious or not. Ginny wasn’t sure either, though at least half her discomfort had to come from the fact that over the past week, she’d binged every episode of Building Character. She kept getting flashes of his TV self, leaner and fresher faced, laid over the current one, like a double image.

“No,” he finally answered, something like a smirk playing over his mouth. “And, y’know, I’m the one who’s been coming to this store for years. Wouldn’t you be the one stalking me?”

Ginny laughed, a little too high and a little too hard to be completely natural. “In your dreams, Lawson.”

“Just Mike is fine.”

The laughter dried up in Ginny’s mouth as her eyes went wide. “What?”

“Mike. That is my name.” His head tipped to the side as he regarded her, curious and amused and too much for Ginny, in all honesty. “You might as well use it if we’re going to keep running into each other.”

“How do you know we’re going to keep running into each other?” she demanded, scrambling to find her footing in this exchange and focus on the Mike who existed in the present, not just on her laptop screen. “So much for making me believe you’re not a stalker, by the way.”

He rolled his eyes. “It’s not such a big town, and Al likes to gossip. He told me you’ve been in at least once a day all week. Given the shape of your house, you’re gonna be here pretty often.”

“Oh, uh, yeah,” she said, dodging the question of whether or not she’d be calling him Mike any time in the near future. Maybe when Building Character and the way she’d chattered at the show like Mike was actually at work somewhere in the house as she painted was further in her mental rearview. God, she needed to make some friends around here. People who would keep her from talking to Hulu to feel like she had company. “There is a lot of work left to do.”

“And you’re starting with the painting?”

Grateful for the segue—and it didn’t even sound nearly as judgmental as she was sure he wanted to be—Ginny eagerly latched onto this topic. “Sort of. I’ve been getting some furniture, too.” She couldn’t seem to stop the steady flow of chatter, even as she was aware Lawson couldn’t be that interested. “Oh! And I just picked up this door from a flea market down in Encinitas. It’s got this art deco stained glass that’s all ocean waves. I’m thinking of painting the shutters blue to match.”

Mike nodded along anyway, but when he opened his mouth, it wasn’t to praise her thriftiness or design instincts. Instead, he asked, “You’re putting a door from a flea market in your house?”

Ginny shrugged. It was cheaper than getting a brand new one and it fit in the frame she already had. Which was exactly what she informed a despairing Lawson. Plus, how many people have hundred year old front doors?

“There’s a reason for that,” he said, clearly exasperated. “It’s gonna splinter the first time someone tries to bash it in.”

It was the sheer grouchiness in his voice that finally shook Ginny out of her awkwardness. This man in front of her, the one frowning so forbiddingly, was Mike Lawson. The one she’d gotten to know over piles of 2x4s and through a fine sheen of plaster dust. Whoever he’d been when Building Character was filmed didn’t really exist anymore.

All she needed to do was look at his beard to know that.

“Who’s bashing in doors around here?” she joked, trying to settle back into their customary banter.

“You can never be too careful,” Mike replied without actually answering the question.

“I’ve managed to protect my house from burglars just fine on my own, thanks.”

Lawson was still frowning when he asked, “You’re really doing this by yourself?”

Ginny rocked back, surprised by the shift in topic. “How else am I supposed to do it? You got me through the difficult stuff. I can manage to strip some cabinets and install a few light fixtures on my own.”

He was smart enough not to argue, though his skepticism was hard to miss. “I’m sure you’re more than capable, but that doesn’t mean you have to do it on your own.”

Ginny snorted, but didn’t bother to explain herself at his curious look. Lawson must have forgotten what it was like to be new in town. Especially a small town like this. Vaguely suspicious stares and curious murmurs still followed Ginny almost everywhere she went, though she’d done her best to present a friendly face, willing to wait out the distrust. Having grown up in a small town of her own, she knew that strangers weren’t always met with open arms. She had her small circle of friends—Blip and Evelyn, Cara, Livan and most of the other guys, and even Lawson on good days—which was so much better than what she’d started with. Ginny could afford the wait on this front.

“Well, I’m going to,” she replied, decisive and determined. (And entirely missing the thoughtful frown on Lawson’s face.)

After all, what other choice did she have?

As it turned out, Ginny had more than a few choices.

Somehow—and the exact mechanics of this information exchange were never quite nailed down to Ginny’s satisfaction—word got around quickly among her limited acquaintance that she might be in a little over her head.

The first person to show up and offer her help was Evelyn Sanders, Ginny’s realtor. Ginny had seen the woman a few times in the past months, but it was mostly in passing. Friendly smiles as they maneuvered past each other at the grocery store and quick hellos in line for coffee. So, Evelyn’s sudden appearance on her doorstep, ready to work, was nothing short of a shock.

Ginny nonetheless invited her and her two rambunctious seven-year-olds inside, falling back on ingrained manners to get over her surprise.

“I’m so sorry it took me so long to come check up on you,” Evelyn said in place of an actual greeting as she ushered her boys in ahead of her. The kids, a set of twins by all appearances, looked up at Ginny, and she looked back, at a loss. Their frank curiosity was a refreshing change of pace from the veiled interest that dogged Ginny’s steps in town. At their mother’s permission, however, they both scampered out the backdoor to the waiting beach. No stranger could compare to the pull of the ocean to two seven-year-olds. “There was this whole thing—there was a house and a contested will and a court order—that just took forever to wrap up, and then Gabe and Marcus started school…”

Evelyn smiled winningly as she trailed off and Ginny looked uncertainly back.

“Oh,” Ginny said, upon realizing the other woman was waiting for a response. She was very aware that she’d gotten a streak of paint in her hair earlier in the day and could in no way compare to Evelyn’s spotless dress. “That’s all right?”

Evelyn flapped her hand, “Thank you, but I still should’ve come earlier. I always try to come for the housewarming, at least.” Then, with an evaluative glance around the living room, which had mostly turned into storage for Ginny’s estate sale finds, she added, “Although maybe I’m not as late as I thought. Blip told me he was done working on the house.”

Right, Blip. It’d honestly slipped Ginny’s mind that Lawson’s right hand man was married to her real estate agent. She hadn’t seen him in so long; he’d been one of the first to disappear from the project, apparently heading up the next one a few towns over. “He is,” she assured. “But I’m not.”

With the enthusiasm of a woman who loved a good project, Evelyn demanded all the details. If she was disappointed that Ginny was largely flying blind, she didn’t show it. She did, however, march through the house to take in the state of things for herself. In no time at all, showing off a mind built for organization and a personality for delegation, she’d helped Ginny catalogue all the remaining projects and construct a feasible timeline to finish them. As she left barely an hour later, apparently late for the boys’ baseball practice, she promised to take Ginny to all the best antique stores and salvage yards.

Ginny wasn’t holding her breath. Evelyn clearly had a lot on her plate, and while the help today was certainly appreciated, Ginny was more than prepared to finish this thing on her own.

All too soon, though, she learned just why no one underestimated Evelyn Sanders twice.

Not only did the realtor make good on her promise to take Ginny bargain hunting, she proved to be a formidable haggler and a determined friend.

Whether she liked it or not, Ginny was going to become part of the Sanders’ social circle.

(She definitely liked it.)

Suddenly, like a switch had been flipped, Ginny’s house was the new place to be.

On the weekends, some combination of the old crew—Sonny or Melky or even Livan, taking a break from his punishing social schedule—came over and helped her pull out the overgrown tangle of weeds in the front yard and, when that was done, moved on to repainting the siding. Blip would sometimes show up with the boys after school to jump in on whatever needed doing. He said he wanted them to learn the value of hard work, but since they were seven and had the attention spans to prove it, they mostly ended up eating cookies and milk in the kitchen while their dad and Ginny stripped cabinets, shit talking one another’s taste in basketball teams. Evelyn would breeze in after her office closed, take a quick tour to survey the newest improvements, and round up her boys so Ginny could “have some peace and quiet.”

Sometimes, she even rounded Ginny up and brought her home for “a proper home cooked meal,” which Ginny would never turn down, even if she thought she should. The sandwiches Cara made down at the cafe were good, but there were only so many of them that she could eat.

In payment, Ginny always made sure to have more than enough beer (or juice for her underage helpers) in the fridge and pizza to feed an army waiting at the end of the day. She, personally, thought she should be doing more in repayment, but every time she offered, they all shook her off. All they’d take was food and gratitude.

Which Ginny was more than happy to give.

She would’ve given a lot more for the comfort that came with knowing there were people here who had her back.

Even if one of those people wasn’t Mike Lawson.

It wasn’t that he wasn’t around. She’d see him at the bar when Livan dragged her out of the house to escape the paint fumes, or at the hardware store when she inevitably had to go back to pick out a different sealant for her salvaged dining room table. He regularly showed up at the Sanders house for their bi-weekly potluck, and never empty handed.

Okay, Ginny saw him a lot, actually.

And every time she did, they got along just fine. Better than fine, even.

It was funny, getting to know the real him, and not just whatever version of Mike Lawson had been deemed fit for TV. On screen, he was clearly meant to be someone’s wish fulfillment: An appropriately rugged man’s man, but also a dedicated husband. Someone who not only worked with his hands, but could appreciate the finer things in life, too.

He was pretty much a walking wet dream.

And, don’t get her wrong, he did an excellent job of it, but he wasn’t quite real, either.

The real Mike had a bit of a dour streak, one Ginny hesitated to believe grew into existence along with his beard. He couldn’t stop rolling his eyes if they were in danger of falling out. He was terminally inclined towards grumpiness.

But he also watched out for his guys like they were his own brothers. He was funny, with a sarcastic bent that Building Character utterly failed to reveal. While he was personally affronted by Ginny’s taste in movies, and threatened her with a Film 101 crash course every other time they saw each other, he didn’t treat her like a moron for liking Mean Girls more than The Maltese Falcon.

Honestly, Ginny liked the man she was slowly coming to know even more than the one she still watched on Hulu sometimes.

For all his faults, Mike always listened to her progress, and Ginny got to pick his brain about particularly stubborn problems she ran up against. He offered advice and Ginny mostly took it with grace. Ginny fed him gossip from his guys, and he pretended not to squirrel away every bit of intelligence.

She even divulged that she’d found his show.

(“I didn’t know I’d hired a famous contractor,” she teased, elbowing him as they both waited for their drinks at the bar. Ginny probably didn’t need any more; she was already pretty buzzed. If she weren’t, there was no way she’d consider this an acceptable topic of conversation. As it was, she kept going. “You had your very own TV show, and you didn’t tell me.”

He rubbed at the back of his neck, sheepish. “It’s not something I really advertise.”

“Well, if I hadn’t heard you complaining about cherry finishes first hand, I wouldn’t have believed it. I never would’ve recognized you.”

“No?” Mike asked, one eyebrow raised and a corner of his mouth turned up, too.

“Nope,” she answered, ignoring how good he looked with that sly grin. “That thing you’ve grown on your face is a pretty excellent disguise.”

He laughed, a sharp burst of surprise that, like always, made Ginny’s stomach flutter. “Don’t hate on the beard, Baker.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Whatever I feel about the beard, it’s only what it deserves.”

The fact that it was the truth, no matter which way she meant it, only made it harder for Mike to argue.)

They were, at least in a casual way, friends.

But he never came to her house.

Ginny tried not to read into it. He renovated homes for a living. Of course he didn’t want to do it in his spare time, and for no money to boot. She couldn’t blame him for spending his free time doing other things. Things that didn’t involve her. (Even if they often involved other women, if the gossip around town to be believed.)

It didn’t mater that he always made sure to seek her out at Blip and Ev’s or the bar or even when they crossed paths in town. He was just being nice.

That was all.

“Son of a bitch!”

Ginny glared down at her phone, though the Lou the tow truck driver had already hung up and could appreciate neither her cursing nor her unimpressed stare. One of the unexpected problems of living in a small town was when there was a big accident up the coast, the only available tow truck was going to be kept busy for a while.

Which meant she was currently stuck on the side of the road, victim of a blown tire.

It was too dark and too far for Ginny to risk the walk into town, though Lou’d assured her he didn’t need her to stick around for the tow if she wanted someone to pick her up. Unfortunately, though, everyone she would’ve considered calling was busy somewhere that wasn’t the side of the road.

Blip and Ev were having a date night down in San Diego, Livan didn’t believe in answering phone calls (and was probably already knee deep in some flirting at the bar), and, well, those were the only people Ginny was actually comfortable calling. Cara the barista had insisted on trading numbers back when it became clear Ginny would be a new regular, but they rarely talked outside of the coffee shop. Their first foray into friendship couldn’t be Ginny demanding a favor.

Mike’s phone number was still somewhere in her contacts, not that Ginny actually had any plans to put it to use. He wasn’t that kind of a friend.

She sighed and flopped back in the bed of her truck, flinging an arm dramatically across her eyes for good measure.

She was so wrapped up in her pity party, she didn’t even hear the other car drive up. She also didn’t hear its driver kill the engine, get out, close the door, and make it within five feet of her.

“Need some help?”

Ginny bolted upright and was immediately blinded by a set of halogen headlights. All she could make out was a large, dim shadow approaching her. She jumped to her feet and immediately wished she’d thought to grab the tire iron or something from the bed of the truck. It might not’ve helped with her blown tire, but Ginny’d seen Criminal Minds, okay? If someone wanted to try and grab her, it would’ve been a hell of a help.

Panic flooding her veins and well before she’d gotten a good look at whomever had approached her, Ginny jabbed out with a fist. Who cared that she didn’t know who it was? She was alone on a dark road, but she was not going to end up as inspiration for the writers of Law and Order.

Unfortunately, blinded as she was, her aim was pretty shoddy. Her hand collided with something solid and unforgiving.

“Ow! Fuck!” her assailant protested, knocking her next punch out of the way. “Jesus, Baker! It’s me.”

“Lawson?” she demanded, reason catching up with panic and battling for control. She squinted against the glare of his headlights, and realized that: yes, she had just tried to punch out Mike Lawson. A hysterical burble of laughter climbed out of her stomach, and she pressed a hand over her heart, trying to calm its furious rhythm. “You scared me!”

He grimaced, holding out his hands placatingly and stepping to the side so Ginny didn’t have to stare straight into the light. Bright spots danced across her eyes, but she could still make out how guilty and concerned he looked. “Sorry,” he said, making sure to keep his distance. “Just, I saw your truck and pulled over to make sure you were all right. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

Ginny’s heart was still thundering away in her chest, but she managed to nod. “Okay,” she said, swallowing back the bitter tang of adrenaline. As it went, she felt her knees begin to go, too. Before they completely dissolved beneath her, she leaned back against the lowered tailgate, hoping it seemed nonchalant and not necessary. “I get it. Next time, though, maybe try to avoid startling a woman alone at night.”

“Noted,” he agreed, his eyes sweeping over her in something almost like worry. “Are you okay?”

She waved him off, though the furrow of his brow didn’t ease up at all. “I’ll survive. And maybe by the time Lou gets here with the tow truck, I’ll have my heart rate back to normal.”

Mike ignored her dig in favor of frowning. “Tow truck? What’s wrong?”

“Blew a tire.”

“Don’t you have a spare?”

“That was it,” she replied, nodding to the shreds of rubber still clinging to her back wheel. Carefully, she eased herself up onto the tailgate. Her knees felt less watery now, but the tow truck was still a good half hour away. Might as well settle in for the wait.

Mike rolled his eyes. “You know you’re not supposed to drive around on it, right? It’s just to get you into a shop.”

Ginny rolled her eyes right back. “No, I had no idea, Lawson.” At his unimpressed stare (maybe it was just the shadows playing tricks on her eyes that made her think he was smiling a little reluctantly, too), she threw her hands in the air. “I was prioritizing, okay? I’d rather definitely be able to take a shower than maybe prevent, well. This.”

“What happened to your shower?”

“Nothing. It’s great.” It was. It was maybe her favorite place in the house, and not just because it was the only thing she hadn’t had to put any work into. Mike had turned what was once a tragically outdated bathroom into a mini spa, and Ginny would be lying if she said it hadn’t affected her tiny crush on him at all. “But the hot water heater died last week, and I had to get it replaced.”

He shook his head and heaved himself up onto the bed of her truck, too. “That house is a money pit. How you haven’t already gone bankrupt is a mystery.”

Ginny ignored his halfhearted probing in favor of leaning away from his warm and far-too-close bulk.

“What’re you doing?” she demanded, maybe a tiny bit shrill. But it was only natural. The only times she was ever this close to Mike Lawson, they were surrounded by other people. Now here they were, sitting in the bed of a pickup on a deserted road. It was like they were teenagers parking, only without any of the making out. As Ginny was all too aware.

“Getting comfortable,” he drawled, eying her askance. Once he’d settled in, leaning back on his hands, he let out a gusty sigh. “I’ve been on my feet since 6:00 AM.”

Ginny didn’t need to check her watch to know it was well past 9:00 now. She elbowed him, and replied to his affronted expression, “So you should be going home. Not waiting around in the dark for a tow truck that’s still twenty minutes away.”

Why she didn’t tell him that they didn’t, actually, have to wait at all—could, in fact—leave the truck for Lou to pick up, Ginny couldn’t say. Probably, she didn’t want to impose, didn’t make him drive all the way to her house when he’d done such a marvelous job of avoiding lately.

“I think that’s a pretty good reason for me to stay, actually,” he responded, dry as kindling. “Can’t go around abandoning damsels in distress, can I?”

“Such chivalry.”

“Someone’s gotta keep real manners alive.”

“Well, you’re not much good to me if you’re falling asleep,” Ginny grumbled, feeling warmth rise up her chest. She’d made the mistake of turning to look at Mike, and nearly lost her breath. His eyes were closed, face relaxed and tipped up into the cool night air. He seemed so at ease. Even just sitting on the corrugated metal of her pickup’s bed.

He laughed, low and rich and the goose bumps that erupted across Ginny’s skin had nothing to do with the breeze.

“Just wake me up if someone tries to kidnap you,” he said, laying back and getting comfortable.

She didn’t reply, or even look at him. Just curled her fingers around the edge of the tailgate and tried not to flinch as his automatic headlights went out, plunging them into darkness. With only the moon to illuminate them now, it all felt dangerously intimate. Which was ridiculous. Just because Ginny thought he looked perfectly climbable (and there was a thought she shouldn’t be having about her friends, no matter how their jeans clung to their thighs) didn’t mean—

Her phone buzzed just in time. Before Ginny could become too aware of the sound of Mike’s breathing next to her, or the warmth of his thigh practically pressed against hers.

Eager for the distraction, she pulled it out to see a message from Blip.

Hey, Lou said you’re stuck somewhere on Route 11. Do you need me and Ev to come get you?

Jesus, news traveled fast around here.

“Who is it?”

Mike’s voice was a little dreamy, distant enough to make Ginny turn and look at him against her better judgment. His arms were tucked behind his head, biceps straining against his sleeves in a way that was embarrassingly familiar. In the dim glow from her phone, Ginny could make out one eye open and squinting towards her.

“Uh.” She swallowed and made the plunge. She couldn’t sit out here in the dark with Mike Lawson for much longer. “Lou. He said I should find a ride because the pile up north of town is taking forever to untangle. I can leave the key under the seat.”

Automatically, Mike pushed himself upright, only groaning a little on the way. “All right, let’s get going, then.”

Still, Ginny hesitated. “You sure?”

“Huh.” He paused, like he was thinking it over. “Now that you mention it, yeah. I’m gonna go ahead and leave you here alone.” Ginny didn’t laugh, so he leveled her with a wry glare even as he offered her a hand down. “C’mon, Baker. I’m takin’ you home.”

Trying, and mostly failing, to rein in her grin, she took his hand and followed him back to his car.

The ride was pretty quick, passing easily as Ginny and Mike traded bits of news and gossip. You heard Salvamini’s wife is pregnant again? They think it’s twins this time. Natalie Luongo and Oscar Arguella think they’re doing such a good job at this secret dating thing, but half the town’s talking about them anyway. Tommy Miller got in another brawl with Theo Falcone; he’s lucky he didn’t break his other hand this time.

In no time at all, they were pulling up to Ginny’s house, which was looking more and more like a place someone actually lived. When it wasn’t pitch dark, the blue shutters stood out cheerfully against the window boxes of yellow and white tulips. A jasmine vine curled over the front door, and wafted its scent through the open windows. The place had some curb appeal again.

Mike parked and killed the engine, but Ginny didn’t make a move to get out. She didn’t want this moment to end yet.

“You painted,” Mike pointed out, rather obviously.

“Yeah,” she agreed, feeling a well of words bubble up and not knowing quite how to stop them, “that dingy tan wasn’t working for me. Maybe white’s a little on the nose for a seaside cottage, but I like it.”

“It looks good,” he said, a little too surprised for Ginny’s tastes.

“Thanks,” she replied, dry enough to make him chuckle. Then, in the interest of fairness, she added, “I did have help.”

“So I heard. By all accounts, it’s gone pretty well.”

“All accounts, huh? You gossiping about me, Lawson?”

In the darkness of the car, it was hard to tell if his ears flushed a dull red the way she’d sometimes seen them do when he got caught out in a lie. Still, he tried to play it off, saying, “You hear things around town.”

“Uh huh,” Ginny said, grinning wide and not bothering to conceal it.

He rolled his eyes. “When basically everyone you know is doing something, you hear a lot about it.”

“When everyone you know is doing something, you’d think you might check and see what all the fuss is about for yourself.”

When Mike remained stubbornly silent, refusing to meet her gaze, Ginny’s eyes narrowed. She let herself wonder why exactly Mike had not once shown up when most of his employees and friends—though, okay, the Sanders were the only people in town Ginny could say with any certainty Mike actually liked—were helping her out. Even Al had finally warmed up to her persistent small talk.

(But only after she mentioned having to go see his daughter Natalie after an unfortunate incident involving a hammer and both of Ginny’s thumbs. As it turned out, Al could take a shine to anyone who gave one of his children a compliment. Well, if someone had told Ginny earlier, she’d have been singing the Luongo girls’ praises as soon as possible because she definitely could’ve used that Friends and Family Discount back when she had no idea what she was doing. Now that she mostly knows what she’s doing, it’s still pretty handy, though.)

But Mike had remained curiously absent. Conspicuously absent, now that she thought about it.

“You sent them all, didn’t you?” she demanded indignantly, things falling into place. “You felt bad for me and told everyone I was in over my head!”

“No,” was his immediate response, sure and firm. “I maybe suggested to Blip that Evelyn check up on you, but everything after that was all her. And you, too. You won over people on your own.”

Ginny frowned, trying to hang onto her annoyance even as it fled as quickly as it’d come. “I could’ve done it on my own.”

“I know that,” Mike replied, easy as anything. “But you shouldn’t have to. You know how many people have tried to take on this house and failed? More than I can count. Here you are, though, all on your own and refusing to back down no matter what gets thrown your way. Kinda blows me away.”

She didn’t know what to say, so she just ducked her head and smiled. When she finally felt up to it, Ginny glanced at Mike through the screen of her eyelashes. This time there was no mistaking the flush riding across his cheeks.

“Thanks,” she murmured, shy.

“It’s just the truth,” he said, trying to frown forbiddingly like if he was gruff enough now, Ginny’d forget the soft center hidden behind all that sarcasm and flannel.

“Okay,” she replied, opening her door and flooding the interior with light. Mike blinked, and he looked so endearingly startled, Ginny couldn’t help the next words that came out of her mouth. “Wanna come in and see the progress?” At his hesitation, she teased, “I bet it’s been killing you not to tell me exactly what I’ve been doing wrong.”

He rolled his eyes, but he was already pulling the keys from the ignition. “Fine. But only so I can make sure you haven’t ruined all my hard work.”

“I mean, if you’re pulling everything down to the studs and changing the entire layout, can you even call it a renovation anymore? It’s basically new construction.”

Ginny, who had no horse in this race, just shrugged, making Mike scowl a little. Well, a little more than he already was. It didn’t seem to matter how good of a mood he was in, he was usually scowling at least a little. It made his grins all the brighter.

Except, Ginny had other matters on her mind right now. Well, other matters that should be on her mind. Namely, installing the new faucet she’d picked out for the kitchen sink. The old one had sprung a leak and was ugly as sin, anyway.

Mike had offered to put it in for her, but Ginny’d gotten this far without his help; he only showed up after she’d gotten the old one mostly taken apart, after all. She wanted to finish it herself. He accepted that easily enough, but still claimed he was going to stick around to “supervise.”

If “supervising” meant complaining about the current lineup of HGTV shows, he was doing a bang up job.

He had, at least, managed to keep her from giving up in frustration when it turned out the old faucet was basically rusted into the water pipes. He’d deigned to wedge himself under the sink and put some elbow grease into the wrenching required to free the plumbing from the leaky faucet. If Ginny’d appreciated the picture he’d painted, his shirt riding up a little over his stomach, more than the actual help, that was her business.

Mostly, that was par for the course when Mike came around. He didn’t do much actual work around the house, but he’d show up and look over what she’d accomplished since he was last there. Every so often, he’d be her muscle, wrestling a door into the frame or helping her move around furniture.

More often, though, he was just eye candy.

Not that Ginny ever planned on telling him that.

“Seriously,” he continued, leaning heavily on the counter as Ginny finished tightening the new handles and checked over the coupling between faucet and pipe, “what’s the point in buying a old house if you’re just gonna rob it of all the things that make it unique?”

“What do you do when someone wants to knock down all the walls in a house, then?” she asked because she couldn’t help herself. “Just tell them no?”

“With more tact than that.” At Ginny’s snort, he straightened and pointed a finger at her. “I can be tactful. I can be downright charming when I want.”

Ginny snorted again and set aside her wrench. “Sure you can. You think I can try turning this on?”

Mike shrugged, though he did run a critical eye over the setup. “You can definitely try.”

Since that was as good as she’d get, Ginny ducked down to turn the water on again. When she straightened, his eyes didn’t dart away from her, but there was a hint of pink blooming across his cheeks. Biting back a smile Ginny paused with her hand poised dramatically over the handle. “Moment of truth.”

He rolled his eyes, but came to stand next to her. “All right, Baker, let’s see what you’ve got.”

She flipped the handle and beamed as water began to flow from faucet head. Ginny turned to preen up at Mike, but before she could annoy him into congratulating her, an ominous hissing sound came from the kitchen sink.

In horror, they both turned and watched as the stream slowed to a trickle and stopped for a moment as the pipes began to rattle. Then, right from the base of the faucet, a gushing spray of water burst forth.

“Shit!” Ginny shrieked, ducking away from the sputtering faucet and right into Mike’s warm, firm chest. His arms, which had been reaching around her to fix whatever she’d done, now caged her in, right in the path of the spray. She cringed back from the cold water, further into his embrace. “Mike, move!”

She had to duck under his arm to get out of the way, since he didn’t react quickly enough. Any thrill that she had at being caught up in Mike’s arms was dampened by the situation.

Literally.

Water dripped from her hair into her eyes, and she could only imagine where it hit Mike as he took the full brunt of the spray now that she wasn’t shielding him. He squawked a little, flinching away. Ginny scrambled to reach into the cabinet and shut off the valve.

The spray stopped and kitchen descended back into quiet. Ginny straightened and took in the sight before her.

Mike stood, dripping water like an angry cat. Drops fell from his hair and beard and rolled down his already soaked flannel. It clung to him like a second skin, which was not what Ginny should’ve been taking away from this, but she was only human, okay?

He dashed water out of his eyes and glared as giggles helplessly fell past Ginny’s lips. She covered her mouth with her hand, but she couldn’t stop. She shook her head in apology, but that just made her ponytail swing from side to side, splattering them both with more water as it went. Mike’s grimace finally lightened, his own mouth twitching as he struggled to keep his own laughter in.

When it burst out, it mingled with Ginny’s, a harmony she’d never get sick of hearing.

And there was a thought she shouldn’t really be having. Mike was her friend, and that was all. Get over it, Baker, she told herself, trying to school her features and take a deep, calming breath.

“C’mon,” she said. “I just had the washer and dryer put in. We’ll get your shirt drying and then come back and clean this up.”

“Did you pay someone to come and install it?” He frowned, following her anyway to the hall closet that now doubled as her laundry room.

“No, they do it for free when you buy the warranty.”

“Yeah, ‘cause the warranty’s already a rip-off,” Mike grumbled, stripping off the sopping wet flannel. The white t-shirt he wore underneath was a little damp, though it already fit across his chest in a way that, ironically enough, made Ginny’s mouth go dry.

She blinked and turned to fiddle with the machine’s controls, pulling off her own soaked sweatshirt and tossing it inside with Mike’s flannel. Her tank top had a few damp patches, but it was a dark red and didn’t present the same issues as Mike’s. And there definitely wasn’t a part of her that wished that it did; if there was no reason for Mike’s eyes to go dark with desire, there was no reason to be disappointed when they didn’t.

“Well,” Ginny finally made herself say after getting the dryer started, “I didn’t have much of a choice. If I can’t even install a kitchen faucet correctly, I don’t think there’s much hope I could’ve handled this.”

“You would’ve been fine,” Mike replied with a certainty that always made Ginny’s gut tighten in gratitude. For all he’d been so skeptical of her ability to let someone else fix this disaster of a house, Mike definitely didn’t think that now. And every reminder of that fact, his quiet belief, bolstered her on. “And you could’ve called me, y’know.”

“I could’ve?” She eyed him sidelong, sure that if she faced him head on, she’d do something stupid.

Stupid maybe, but also so, so satisfying.

“Yeah.” There was no eye roll this time, which made Ginny turn and lean one hip against the rumbling machine. Mike’s face was open, even a little fond. “You could’ve. That’s what friends are for, right?”

Ginny’s smile froze and she found herself nodding automatically. When Mike’s brow furrowed, she rushed to cover up any of her disappointment. “I’ll keep that in mind, old man.”

Mike just laughed and shook his head. “Old man, huh? Now I’m definitely not telling you how to fix your faucet.”

He eventually did, but only after Ginny’d pouted at the offending object for a full five minutes, unsure of where she’d gone wrong. When he finally came over to lean against the counter beside her, she soaked up both his advice and his body heat and tried to tell herself that just friends stood this close all the time. And just friends smiled at each other just like this, too. And just friends thought about how easy it would be to pull one another into their bedroom and become more than just friends.

Okay, maybe that was just wishful thinking.

(It definitely was.)

Later, Ginny would blame that for what she did next.

When she turned on the faucet again and they weren’t treated to a second impromptu shower, she maybe forgot herself. Just a little.

Before she really thought about what she was doing, Ginny’d flung her arms around Mike’s neck, laughing in delight. Immediately, one of his arms wrapped around her back, his big hand splayed out over her ribs and pulling her in. Not that she needed much encouragement, rolling up onto her tiptoes to stay as close as possible. She hid her smile against his shoulder and only pulled back when he did. For a long moment, they stared each other in the eyes, Mike’s hand still firm on her waist, fingers flexing. She was so, so sure, something was going to happen.

She wanted something to happen.

And Ginny would swear that it was going to, except—

His phone rang.

Even hours later, as she lay in bed, Ginny couldn’t get the feel of him pressed so tight against her out of her head. The way he smelled, the sound of his pulse near her ear, it all played over and over, making it impossible to sleep.

There was no way her dreams would live up to reality.

What also made it impossible to sleep was the way he’d stepped away to take the call and dismay rushed in to take his place. For a second, she couldn’t quite look at him, feeling like her cheeks might really burst into flames if she did. Nonetheless, Ginny could feel his eyes on her, even as he listened and nodded along to whatever he was being told.

She lifted a hand to her lips, telling herself she couldn’t still feel his breath on them. Her heart threatened to pound its way out of her ribcage, but it wasn’t panic. No, it was thrilling and electric, bright enough to make her feel like she could take off flying.

As soon as Ginny came to this realization, Mike ended his call and disheartening silence rang between them.

Awkwardly, he cleared his throat, looking anywhere but her. For her part, Ginny couldn’t look away now, cataloguing the bob of his Adam’s apple and the almost invisible spray of freckles across his nose.

She might as well, since she had a sinking suspicion she wouldn’t be seeing much more of them in the near future.

Sure enough, Mike made up some excuse—offering up far too much information about the lumber crisis Blip was having for it to be anything but a lie—and was out of the house before she could protest.

No matter how much she’d wanted him to kiss her, he hadn’t.

And she was starting to think he never would.

That didn’t gut her. Not even a little bit.

In spite of her slightly inconvenient—because, really, he’d given no real indication that he wanted to be anything other than friends—feelings for Mike, life did go on. So, while Ginny tried to get over her stupid crush, she also threw herself into finishing up the last repairs and furnishing her house.

In a whirlwind of determined activity, from which there was one conspicuous absence, Ginny threw herself into finding the perfect area rug or refinishing the desk that would go in the guest bedroom or hanging the swing for the back porch.

Anything to take her mind off that absence.

Not that it was all that easy to do. For all Mike had made himself pretty scarce lately, it seemed like he was all anyone wanted to talk about. Everywhere Ginny went, people were dying to give her updates. She heard through the rumor mill that he’d taken on a huge project up near LA, run into his ex-wife, and hadn’t been back in town for weeks.

Well. That was fine. It was even fine that people always seemed to give her this gossip with sympathetic smiles and pitying looks.

Ginny didn’t need his help. There were plenty of other people who would help her out.

And soon enough, all that help and hard work had paid off.

The ramshackle little beach cottage she’d bought on impulse a little more than three months ago was finally finished.

To celebrate, Ginny invited everyone who’d played a role in buffing her diamond in the rough to its current shine to a housewarming party. She set up a bonfire out on the beach and bought enough marshmallows for her own Stay Puft Man. That was exactly what a grown up housewarming party needed, right? S’mores.

For other food, Cara, her barista friend and the woman who’d kept her fed while she was functionally kitchenless, brought all the leftover pastries from the café and Al insisted on manning the grill. Natalie put in an appearance, too, strategically timed so her dad wouldn’t notice she and Oscar showed up in the same car. Of course, so did all the guys from Mike’s crew, along with Blip and Evelyn and the boys.

She even invited Mike, though she didn’t really expect him to show up.

Which, of course, meant he had to go and make an appearance, anyway.

It was late into the evening before he showed up. Well after some guests had already been and left. Still, there were enough people milling around not to make his presence too strange.

Ginny looked up in the middle of a conversation with Sonny and Butch, and even before she caught sight of him, frowning faintly at the arrangement of furniture in the front room she knew he was there. She actually liked her delightful hodgepodge of things. None of it was supposed to go together, not when she’d found it all at estate sales and salvage yards and antique stores, but once it was in the room, it felt like home.

For some reason, it felt even more like home with Mike standing there, too.

Like her weeks of disappointment meant nothing at all, Ginny felt the flutters erupt back to life in her stomach. God, she’d missed him, no matter what she’d told herself.

She made vague excuses to Butch and Sonny, ignoring their smirks and knowing glances, and made a beeline straight for him.

“You made it.”

Mike looked up from inspecting the cushions she’d put on the window seat, maybe startled, maybe not. “You invited me.”

“And I never heard if you were going to come or not.”

“Sorry, I can—”

“No,” Ginny blurted, reaching out when he turned over his shoulder towards the door. She stopped herself just in time from taking hold of his wrist. Her hand fell back to her side, dangling limply. “I was just surprised.”

He nodded, and an awkward silence descended over them both.

Ginny searched for something to say, chewing on her lip and looking over her remaining guests, all of whom were very studiously avoiding this area of the living room. A hot flush started to climb up Ginny’s cheeks.

Just as she was about to make an excuse to leave herself, Mike broke the quiet, gesturing to the eclectic mix of furniture. “Where’d you even find this stuff?”

“Here and there. Evelyn reads the obituaries so she can get a jumpstart on all the good estate sales.”

He snorted and Ginny felt her shoulders relax. Like that was the cue he’d been waiting for, Mike offered her a soft smile.

“I can’t tell if there’s a theme or not,” he grinned, taking in the wingback chair placed next to a Lucite side table. “Am I missing something?”

“Unless ‘Stuff I Like’ is a theme, not really.”

“Not if you’re planning on a career as an interior designer, it’s not.”

Ginny wrinkled her nose, the prospect of having to do all this again making her head spin. “I think one house was all I had in me.”

“That’s a relief,” he said, grinning but still making it sound nothing like a joke. “I’ve had more than enough of interior designers.”

She shrugged, but didn’t bother to wipe the exuberant smile off her face at the certainty in his voice. “Good thing I like my job, then.”

“Good thing,” Mike agreed, his head tipping at a slight angle to take her in.

Ginny simply looked back, the flutters in her stomach now a veritable rush of quivers. Hope clogged up her throat, making her eyes shine.

He shifted, his shoulder closing in on her, creating a pocket of space, just for them. In response, Ginny could feel herself rock forward, just ever so slightly, onto her toes, ready for whatever move Mike might make. Just as he opened his mouth to say something more, something that looked so promising, Livan called out for Ginny from the kitchen.

Ginny shouted a reply automatically, but by the time she’d answered to his satisfaction and turned back, Mike had closed his mouth again, a bland smile on his face.

“I’ll let you get back to everyone.”

“Okay,” she agreed, prompt and more than a little hollow. But what was the point in that? Ginny was sick of missing opportunities with one man when she didn’t let any others slip through her fingers. “Don’t try and leave without saying goodbye, though.”

He smiled, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes, and nodded a polite agreement.

In all honesty, she didn’t much expect him to keep his word on that front.

So, it was with something of a jolt that much later, while taking a short break from collecting the empties littered across the sand behind the house, Ginny looked up and caught sight of Mike through the window above the sink, sleeves rolled up his arms as he washed dishes. He was the only one left in the house, everyone else long gone.

She blinked, but he was still there when she opened her eyes.

He hadn’t left. She would’ve sworn he left.

But he hadn’t.

Ginny let her feet carry her to the back porch as she processed this information. But rather than open the door and step inside, where Mike was blithely washing her dirty dishes, she sank onto the swing and tried to reorder her thoughts.

Here was what she knew:

Mike Lawson, against all odds, had gone from grumpy contractor to one of Ginny’s closest friends. Mike inspired feelings that were distinctly more than friendly in her. Mike had disappeared on her after sharing an arguably romantic moment. Mike may or may not have seen his ex-wife recently, which could have done any number of things to his mindset. Mike had come to her party.

Those were the facts. (Though nothing close to all of them. What was she supposed to do with the fact that he smelled the way fall should or that he liked alfredo sauce more than marinara? How about the fact that what he called her “constant interruptions” only annoyed him about half the time? Or the fact that she wanted to know more and more until there was nothing she didn’t know about Mike Lawson?) She just wasn’t sure what to make of them.

Before she could reach any conclusions, though, Mike’s voice broke into her thoughts.

“There you are. Aren’t you gonna come in?”

Ginny stared up at him wide eyed for a moment too long. His head tipped to the side and it was so similar to how he’d looked at her earlier tonight, eyes soft and shoulders relaxed, she couldn’t take it. Not another close call with no resolution.

“There’s so much sand in there!” she babbled instead, unwilling to give any of her other thoughts voice. “I’ll never be able to get it out.”

“You live on the beach,” he pointed out, a chuckle not quite burbling through his words.

“My house is very close to the beach,” Ginny corrected. “Which should stay outside where it belongs.”

“I’ll make sure it gets the memo.”

Ginny laughed, but when Mike didn’t say anything else, just continued leaning against the door frame like some kind of burly male model, she scrambled for something appropriate to say because “Can I climb you like a tree?” definitely wasn’t it.

“I should’ve made everyone rinse off before they came back in. How hard would it be to put a spigot right here? Or an outdoor shower? Those are things, right?”

“For you or me?” He pushed away from the door and ambled closer, making Ginny all too aware of how quickly she was breathing. Mike didn’t seem to notice, though, sinking down next to her, a warm shield against the chilly ocean breeze.

It didn’t seem to stop her shivers any.

“Are you an option?”

It was out of her mouth, the hurt and confusion she’d tried to ignore embarrassingly clear, before she could help herself.

He ducked his head and winced. “I probably deserved that.”

She didn’t argue, just waited.

“It’s been a long time since I felt even close to the way I feel about you, Ginny,” Mike admitted to the dark. “And that scared me. I tried to pretend that I wasn’t feeling anything, but…”

“But?”

“It hasn’t worked.”

Around the knot of hopeful expectation wedged in her throat, Ginny managed a breathless, “What are you saying, Mike?”

“What am I—” He cut himself off with a self-deprecating laugh. “I’m saying that I’m an option. For more than just home repair, if you’ll—”

Ginny didn’t care that he’d undoubtedly get on her case later for interrupting him again. She didn’t want to hear it, not when he’d finally given her more than a hint that she wasn’t in this thing alone.

So, she laid her hand on his cheek, turned his face towards hers, and silenced him with a kiss.

He pressed back against her, his mouth stretching to mirror Ginny’s grin before moving gently, insistently against it. One of his arms wrapped around her, pulling her close and making the swing sway. She threw her arms around his neck for the second time in her life, sighing into his mouth.

When they drew away, foreheads still resting together as their breath mingled, Ginny knew she had to say something. “You’re the only option,” was what she came up with. Thankfully, Mike’s responding grin only grew when she followed it up with, “For home repair, too.”

Their laughter twined together once again, rising into the night like smoke from the dying bonfire. But nothing about Mike and Ginny, except maybe all of the home improvement projects, was at an end.

It was a little funny. Ginny’d left North Carolina—her home, her family, and the man who wanted to marry her—in search of a fresh start. She would never have expected she’d need to buy and renovate an entire house just to find it, but just because the process wasn’t what she’d planned didn’t make the results any less sweet.

As an ocean breeze rocked the porch swing where she sat cuddled into Mike’s side, Ginny was happy to realize that she wouldn’t trade this house, or any of the headaches it had given her, for the world.

Ginny rose and turned to pull Mike up along with her. He came willingly enough, but she answered his silent question anyway.

“You missed the grand tour,” she announced, studying him from beneath her lashes.

Mike, who’d seen every square inch and worked on most of them, just quirked a brow. “Oh, did I?”

She nodded solemnly, struggling to keep her giddy smile under control. “And it might go very late. Too late for you to drive home. You’ll have to stay the night.”

Clearly, he had no such reservations about letting his blinding grin free. His cheeks appled and his eyes sparkled from the sheer force of it. Ginny didn’t get much of a chance to admire it before he was back in her space, his hands buried in her hair and lips pressing against hers. Only once his tongue had swept into her mouth, making her clutch at his broad shoulders as her knees went weak, did he pull away.

“Staying sounds perfect.”

Ginny didn’t need to hear anything else. Shy and excited all at once, she took his hand and led him inside the house.

Except it wasn’t just a house.

It had taught her how to stand on her own while still accepting the help she needed. It had given her friends and a new family all of her own. It had given her Mike, who might not want to marry her, but the thought of someday being his wife didn’t make her want to run for the hills. Which was definitely a step up from where she’d been just six months ago when she’d come looking for something new.

Maybe she was feeling a bit sappy—and who could blame her when she was still swimming through the daze of kissing Mike Lawson for the first time?—but this place really was so much more than a house.

It was her home.

(But one day, it just might be his, too.)

#Anonymous #Bawson #bawson fic #pitch #pitch fic #i wrote something #what's ginny's job you ask?#¯\_(ツ)_/¯#wait no i did actually put something in #it's web designer #where does she live?#idk ¯\_(ツ)_/¯#somewhere vaguely north of sd #how long do home renos take?#we just can't know

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teachlearnrant · 4 years ago

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Forgetting why I teach - My story

So I have created this blog as an inspirational and motivational source to carry on teaching. I am in my third year of teaching and last year was rough.

So lets start at the beginning... NQT year. As a chemistry specialist, I was asked to teach physics, not a problem, should be able to teach any science right?

Felt I had little to no support on teaching physics (apart from one amazing technician) , no resources available etc. I persevered though and taught to the best of my ability with the promise of teaching chemistry next year. The year went by and several observations (at good with outstanding elements) passed. I felt the year was as good as can be. Passed with ‘flying colors’ is what I was told.

Fast forward to the summer, was approached and asked if I could please teach 2 groups biology next year (one being an exam group) due to a member of staff being on maternity leave. I agreed with the condition, when said staff member returned I October they would take over the biology classes so I can be left to teach chemistry.

Cue the beginning of my second year teaching.

September/October - Taught as normal, October half term approached and received an email. ‘ (redacted) will be back next week to take over the GCSE biology class, please make sure the class are up to date with rota etc’

Perfect I thought, No more biology! A chance to really develop my teaching now rather than subject knowledge.

Side note - I taught this GCSE biology class on a Tuesday afternoon.

So on Monday I had a meeting with member of staff on her return from maternity, wiith seating plan, rota etc ready to hand over class.

Jokes. Never Mind.

The day before the lesson, I was told ‘we thought it would be a good idea if we team teach the group as further support in your early teaching career’ I very begrudgingly accepted. I had to teach that first lesson and then we set up a rota for team teaching etc.

The following week I met with the member of staff returning from maternity, (we will call her Bio Teacher). Bio teacher explained to me that the school no longer wanted us to team teach and I was to carry on teaching with bio teacher observing the lesson each week for ‘support’

So it has now gone from ‘ teach biology just until October’ to ‘your lessons are going to be taken by bio teacher’ to ‘ we’ll team teach’ to ‘ you’ll teach and I will inflict great stress by observing and criticize you teaching a subject you're not specialized in every week’

Now I was not very happy with this situation so had lots of communication with various people about this stopping.

Then one Friday afternoon, I was told ‘ we didn't want to tell you this and cause more stress but the reason this is happening is because of some behavior management issues that got brought up from last year (NQT year). So we would like you to undergo this coaching for 6 weeks and have an official observation at the end.

excuse me what?

Had a breakdown over weekend, thought things through and was ready to go back on Monday to defend myself with:

- Positive behavior management observations from last year

- Emails about high expectations from senior leadership team

- My NQT report that stated behavior as a strong point

School backtracked and said ‘ well, when we said behavior management we might have worded it wrong.’ What we really mean is

- Too many kids going to the toilet in my lesson

- I am sat down too much

- Some kids have jumpers still on

Seriously this is why I am being observed and ripped apart every week?!

Now, I know I still have a lot to learn, and actually that biology group was an absolute nightmare to get them to behave ( more discussion on that later). but if that was truly the reason, I could fix that overnight without any fuss. When mentioning this, I was shut down and told this is happening.

So a few weeks passed, Teaching this nightmare of a group (worst kids I have ever taught for behavior) the. everything finally just gets too much. It started with intense nausea and throwing up on the morning of the lesson. I have been diagnosed with GAD from about 14 years of age so I instantly recognized the beginning of this spiral. Extra pressure was mounting up and up from various sources but this was the main source. It soon moved on from being sick over the weekend worrying about it to basically only getting reprieve for maybe the 15 min after the lesson before the feedback. Then one morning I could not myself down, I knew I had to see someone.

Doctor upped my dosage on my anxiety medicine, which had taken me 4 years to get to the dosage I was on, It felt like 4 years of progress completely erased. In fact it felt like 10 years of progress had been erased.

The doctor also signed me off for 6 weeks for stress and anxiety. For the first 3 weeks I still could not settle down, I started looking at other options for jobs, In my mind that was it, I would not be going back to school under any circumstances. I was not cut out for teaching. I was done. I had maybe a week or two of not feeling sick before the anxiety began creeping back in at the idea of going back. After discussing with my wife, the decision was I can't quit teaching right now, We would have no money for rent, bills etc. I would go back and try again, but would quit if it got too much.

So first week back - I cried my eyes out every single morning. I threw up every single morning. I did find as the day went on It did get better. I decided to just stick it out. Then the whole Tuesday observation started up again. It was a struggle because I was beginning to love teaching my other lessons again. but this one day a week was stopping me from functioning.

A few weeks later COVID became a thing and shut schools down. I was so happy and relieved, I no longer had observations weekly. I won’t go on about lockdown much other than I was no longer anxious about this group. 6 Months passed. Schools were to reopen once more.

Apart from the anxiety surrounding covid, I found myself actually looking forward to teaching again. I could put last year behind me completely.I was just teaching chemistry. I was hopeful once again.

First week back teaching was amazing. No feeling sick, No crying about going in. It was very positive and I was really excited about my career ahead.

and then the email came form bio teacher...

‘can we meet up next week to discuss coaching and your observation and where we go next’

Here we go again. I felt the dread seeping its way back in. But with a positive outlook I thought just do it. Do the observation that will end this coaching session business. Do it and put the past behind. So an observation was agreed for two weeks time.

In those two weeks - I was very happy, My lessons had been going well. I was ready for this observation and to put the past behind. (side note- in this two weeks there was also uproar from other teachers who taught the biology group saying they were unteachable etc. This did validate my feelings a little)

So observation, I tried to include a lot of tactics that the observer herself advertises (yes I was sucking up a little but I wanted this to go well) This observation felt like make or break to me. Either it goes well and the past if truly out down and I could try and move on and be happy in teaching, or it would crumble and I would spiral again. I knew I was not strong enough to spiral again. I could not do that again. I would leave teaching for good without looking back.

Observation happened. I thought it went pretty good and went about the rest of my day. Relief seeping in that this was well and truly the end. I met with the observer that afternoon and boy was I wrong.

Or was I?

So it began with some strengths, for maybe 5 mins which are listed below:

- High expectations and behavior management ( yup you heard right)

- Cold calling was excellent, ensuring no student could answer with ‘I don’t know’

- Tasks were great with good modeling.

Then came the 20 min talk of my faults and weakness’

- No learning objective shared

- What was the point of the starter task (bear in mind this was one of her own techniques!!!!!!!! WTF)

- No Deep Questioning ( which tbf I really would like to get better at so I will work my hardest on that)

So you might be thinking ok, no big deal, some positives, some negatives, and maybe I'm just being too sensitive but the whole conversation left me incredibly deflated and ready to give up once more. The concentration on my flaws was how much of that time was spent. So I went home, cried, ate takeaway, and mentally quit teaching again. I have no idea whether this truly is the end of the ‘coaching’ with bio teacher or not.

It is Sunday now, and I am feeling incredibly anxious about going back to work. If this truly is the end of coaching as agreed, then I would really love to work on my deeper questioning.

If coaching and weeks observations begin again.

Then I 100% well and truly will quit teaching forever. There is no way I can put that above my mental health ever again.

#mental health #teaching

0 notes

rscenarios · 7 years ago

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Zelo - Homecoming

Anon request for football player Zelo confessing to you at the game! The requester also asked he have the blond curls. This could apply to college or high school (but was written more with high school in mind) I hope you enjoy this fluff! - Admin Em

Warnings: None

“_________________!” A cheerful voice says as someone settles in the seat in front of you.

“Hey Junhong,” you muse as you close your book and look up at him. “Finish your reading or did the guys drag you away for homecoming rituals?”

He chuckles at you. “We don’t have rituals.”

“So you just naturally spring one of your curls ten times before every game? Daehyun naturally has to pat Jongup’s butt four times? Yongguk and Himchan always have to chest bump?”

A small blush creeps up his face. “You’ve seen that?”

“Yeah, I noticed Daehyun patting Jongup’s butt when I tried to get your attention once since I thought you were looking my way,” you explained. “I try to see what else I can notice every game before the pregame performance.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, have to do something to pass the time,” you shrug.

“I suppose,” he gives a thoughtful nod.

“And it’s my theory that there will be something different for homecoming.”

“Guess you’ll have to wait and see. So that means you’ll be at the game?” There’s a hint of hope in his voice that makes you smile. Sometimes he’s too cute.

“Of course silly, I have to perform with the band, remember?”

“Right, but will you be staying the entire game?” He clarifies.

“Yeah, Eujin and some of the other girls from the band,” you explain.

A smile forms on Junhong’s face, “That’s good.”

You’re about to question what he means when the English teacher walks in to begin lecture. It wasn’t unusual for the two of you talk so much before class. Junhong was always in your grade, and you’d spoken to each other a few times, mainly about whatever class you were in over the years. But ever since you worked on a project with him last year, he seemed to talk with you more and this class allowed you to get even closer.

The conversation is soon forgotten as you take notes and participate in discussion. When the bell rings, you tell Junhong you’ll be cheering him on later tonight. “Thank you. I’ll see you around,” he says as the two of you part ways.

It wasn’t until near the end of lunch you spotted Junhong walking toward your table. “Hello Junhong,” Hyosung pipes up as she spots his approach. The conversation dies down as he stops at the table.

“Hello everyone,” he gives a shy smile. You aren’t sure what he makes of this until he looks at Euijin, “Can I talk with you?”

“Sure.”

With that the two of you them walk away and you can’t help but smile after them. “What are you thinking about?” Zinger asks, poking you lightly.

“I think he’s going to ask her to the homecoming dance. They’ve been neighbors forever you know so it makes sense.”

“Maybe,” Zinger shrugs before conversation resumes. You don’t get to hear what happens between Junhong and Euijin since the bell rings and you have to head to your next class.

At the end of the day your friend group meets up and naturally you can’t help but ask. “Oh no, he just wanted to discuss the anatomy quiz that we got back,” she tells you.

“Oh,” is all you can say before your group heads to the small festivities outside. You play a few of the little games that have been set up, spending most of your time playing giant jenga with your friends. Eventually you all buy some food that’s available and settle down. “______________!” A voice calls out.

You glance over to see some of the football team headed your way. “Hey Himchan,” you greet him directly since he’s the one who spoke to you. Himchan is probably one of the nicest guys you know. You remembered being so surprised when you met him in band. You would bet anything that he was going to be voted “most popular” or “friend to all”.

“Enjoying homecoming?”

“Yes. Are all of you?”

“Of course, though it will be better once we officially have our victory tonight.”

“Well if you’ve done all your rituals you’ll be fine,” you tease.

“Oh so you know about those?” Daehyun raises an eyebrow, glancing at Junhong.

“I haven’t told her any!” The youngest defends himself quickly.

“I’ve just spotted a few while being on the sideline,” you back him up.

“And the obvious ones, like giving out your jersey,” Hyosung adds, gesturing over to a small crowd of girls in different jerseys.

“You mean the one every lady dreams about,” Himchan winks. “I’m afraid I already handed mine off.”

“Himchan, stop being such a flirt,” Yongguk groans. “We just wanted to make sure you guys were having a good time. Hopefully you enjoy the game later.”

“Only if you guys win,” Nahyun teases.

“Make sure you do all the rituals,” Euijin tells them.

“We’ll make sure it gets done,” Youngjae promises, putting an arm around Junhong who gives a slow nod. Before anything more can be said, the guys head off. With that encounter over, your group finishes eating before you, Euijin, Zinger, and Sumin head to the band room to get your uniforms on and everything set up.

“Have a good performance,” Junhong tells you as he passes by.

“Have a good game,” you call after him.

“Our quarterback better have a good game,” Youngjae teases as he walks passed.

“Be nice,” Jongup tells the elder, and you hear the two bickering as they head down the hall.

Soon enough, you’re warming up before you take Himchan’s instrument from him so he can head to the football field. Ten minutes later, the band marches out and stands at the sideline, waiting for the clock to reach one minute.

“Anything new so far?” Euijin whispers to you.

Your attention goes to the football players to watch. You catch the usual at first, only noting Youngjae bouncing up and down slightly, only stopping when Daehyun whispered something to him. After chest bumping with Yongguk, Himchan moves to take his instrument back and get into his place. With 1:30 left on the count down you watch as Junhong fidgets before springing one of his curls. You can tell he’s nervous by rapid blinking but what shocks you is that you only count nine springs before his helmet is on.

You want to call out to him. Even if the superstition seems silly, you know it's something that matters to him and the team. There's nothing you can do as you start to march with the band. Maybe if he doesn't know it won’t matter. And so you play the pregames songs before the band marches toward the end zone to watch the game and play the school song every touchdown. Instead of playing, most of the first quarter is spent standing around wincing every time Junhong is sacked. The team managed one touchdown, but the other school was doing much better. “This is bad...” Sumin whispers and all you can do is nod as there's a time out.

You wish you could go and tell Junhong to finish his ritual, but you can't interrupt.

The second quarter is better. At the start of halftime the score is 28-14 in favor of the other school. You hand Himchan his instrument before getting into your place on the field. Your body easily moves to the music allowing for a smooth performance as the crowd cheers after each song. You march off the field, spotting the football team waiting for Himchan and cheering him on. Your eyes land on a tired looking Junhong.

Now was your chance.

“Take Himchan's stuff,” you tell Euijin. Before she can ask questions you're rushing off. “Junhong!” You call out as he starts to walk away.

“______________?” Junhong asks as turns to see you mildly out of breath.

Without a word, you reach up and gently pull down a blond curl and release it so it gives a small bounce. “Ten,” you declare. “Your ritual is complete. Now nothing can stand in your way. Please stay safe out there please.”

A grin spreads on his face. “Thank you.”

You give a small nod, about to walk away when he licks his lips nervously. “Wait, there's one other ritual I need to take care of...and I should have earlier but I was nervous.”

“JUNHONG, LET'S GO!” His coach shouts.

“Euijin has something for you...if you accept it. I’ll explain more later. I hope to see you after the game,” Junhong says quickly before runs off, leaving you confused as you head to the locker room to change out of your uniform.

“What was that about?” Euijin asks as the two of you change.

“I wanted to give him some pep by helping him finish a ritual. He mentioned that you had something for me?”

She smiles at you and reaches into her bag. She quickly lets the small bundle drape down to reveal Junhong’s jerseys. You feel your jaw drop. You have so many questions. “Are...are you serious?”

“Yes, he asked me to hang onto it for him for you when he flaked out on his chance in class. He thought I could slip it to you somehow but I'm glad he did something since I had no ideas,” she laughs as you slowly take it from her.

“He was going to ask me earlier?”

“He’s been trying to get the courage all week apparently,” Euijin explains. “But that's something you'll have to discuss with him.”

“Right,” you nod, slipping the jersey over your warmer clothing. “Let’s go find the others.”

“Oh my gosh, it's finally happened?” Sumin questions upon seeing you.

“He might just be giving it to me as a friend. Don't get ahead of yourself,” you tell her quickly. You still can't believe he wanted you in his jersey, let alone that it meant he had feelings for you.

The other two girls are quiet as the three of you head to the stadium. As soon as you enter the area you see the offense heading onto the field. “Go Junhong!” You shout as long as you can.

He looks for the source of the shout and finds you. Even though he has his helmet on you can see him smiling before he gets onto the field. As you find Hyosung and the others they each make a small comment on what you're wearing before the ball is hiked. Junhong quickly throws to Yongguk, who narrowly avoids being tackled. He makes it to the 20 yard line before he gets forced out of bounds.

The game continues with your school's team doing much better. Your group cheers loudly, especially after every touchdown. The team claims a victory with 56 points while the rivals had 30. Both teams shake hands before the rival school leaves, allowing for friends and family to go onto the field.

“Go talk to him,” Hyosung nudges you.

“I’m going, I’m going,” you insist as you stand up and head down the bleachers. You weave through the crowds, occasionally waving to people you know or saying something in passing.

Junhong is chatting with someone when you get closer so you wait off to the side so you don’t disturb them. It doesn’t take long for him to spot, a smile already forming. He says something to the other person before moving toward you.

“Good game, I’m glad your luck changed,” you start.

“Thanks to you,” he nods.

“I didn’t really didn’t have anything to do with your skills. You just seemed distracted before the game even began.”

“Well, I was,” he admits, rubbing the back of his neck.

You can tell he’s nervous as he tries to think of how to word whatever he wants to tell you. So you wait, giving him some time.

“I just wanted to do things properly,” he starts. “You deserve that...but everything I thought of didn’t feel good enough or if it would make you uncomfortable...so I got scared. I feel embarrassed to admit that,” he gives a nervous chuckle. “Every time we would talk I told myself to just ask simply. I just couldn’t get the words to come out. So I asked Euijin if she would help give you the jersey...and then maybe we would get the chance to talk like this.

So when the game started I felt sor of guilty that I didn’t do things myself. That maybe you wouldn’t accept Euijin giving it to you. That by breaking a homecoming ritual, we would lose...and then we were losing, until you came over to me. I was going to tell you then, but well you know how coach wanted me to hurry. So the nerves got a bit better, until I saw you cheering for me. And then I felt like I could do anything.

“_____________________, I know it’s short notice now so I understand if you say no, but would you go to the homecoming dance with me tomorrow night?”

The racing pace of your heart seems to stop as your jaw drops at his words. “I would be honored,” you manage after a moment of collecting yourself. “But, I already promised the others that I would get ready and have dinner with friends...so I’ll have to ask them if you want to do anything beforehand.”

“Anything you want,” he assures. “Just let me know once it’s settled.”

“I will.”

“And if we don’t get dinner together beforehand we can do that another time.”

“Are you already asking me on a second date?” You ask in complete awe, only to feel nervous after the words registered in your mind. You didn’t want him to feel pressure that you assumed this was leading to anything more than just friends going to a dance together.

“I hope there can be many dates...and that you will official go out with me,” he admits bashfully. He didn’t want to ask you out until he was sure you weren’t going to the dance with someone else.

An excited squeal is let out as you wrap your arms around him. “I would love to.”

Junhong doesn’t say anything as he puts his arms around, only to jump when there’s a loud shout of “IT’S ABOUT TIME!” from Youngjae and Daehyun.

Your friends let out a bit of laughter as you feel yourself blushing with Junhong. “Let’s get a picture of you two. ____________, give me your phone,” Euijin holds out her hand. You quickly do as she asks before you and Junhong stand in a better pose for the photo. She snaps a few before handing you the device.

“If you want he can join us for dinner before the dance,” Nahyun offers.

“If you don’t mind, I would like that” Junhong comments.

“I would like that,” you nod.

“Now, we should go celebrate this victory!” Himchan cheers. “Let’s get changed guys.”

And so the guys head to the locker room while the girls wait. You send Junhong the photos before you can forget. Soon enough you’re headed out on the town to celebrate with Junhong holding your hand much of the night.

53 notes · View notes

allenmendezsr · 5 years ago

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Home Made Strength 2 - Grip Strength Edition

New Post has been published on https://autotraffixpro.app/allenmendezsr/home-made-strength-2-grip-strength-edition/

Home Made Strength 2 - Grip Strength Edition

Buy Now

The SECRET WEAPON for lifting heavier weights, building bigger muscle and being more athletic… REVEALED!

What is this Secret Weapon?

GRIP STRENGTH!

Dear Fellow Strength Coach, Fitness Enthusiast, or Hardcore Strength Junkie,

I want to ask you a few questions and I want you to be honest…

Do you ever have trouble holding onto the bar for pull-ups?

Do you ever find it hard to finish a set because your hands give out?

Do you feel like you could put on more muscle if your hands were just a little stronger?

Do you find your hands are the first to go when you are performing longer sets in your training?

Does it feel like your numbers in the gym suffer because of your weak hand strength?

Have you been told that your hand shake is like holding a dead fishf??

My name is Jedd Johnson, and I now I am going to be honest with you.…

I used to have the

same exact problems as you

My hands would burn out in the middle of a set of pull-ups.

I used straps for pull-downs, seated rows, and shrugs.

I would walk into the gym and the first thing I’d do is put my straps onto my wrists, ready to use them on just about every single set.

That was, until I found out about Grip Strength…

You see, I used to think it was absolutely ridiculous to train for Grip Strength.

I thought, “Why take the time to train my Grip when I can just wear straps?”

I thought, “Why take the time to strengthen my hands, which amount to about 5% of my entire body, when I have so many other goals to accomplish?”

In fact, in 2002, I first learned about Grip Training, and I thought it was completely stupid.

However, around this time, I also learned about Ripping Decks of Cards with hand strength.

I thought it would be a pretty cool thing to do at parties and at the bar…

So, for a few weeks I did some Grip Specific training at the end of my workouts.

Before I knew it, I could rip a deck of cards in half in less than 20 seconds.

It was also around this time, that I also noticed increases in all of my other lifts.

After introducing Grip Training to my routine, here are some of the improvements I saw:

My Seated Dumbbell Curl went from about 60-65 lbs to 85 lbs

My Power Clean went from 225 lbs to 255 lbs

I Deadlifted 405 without using an alternated Grip

I began routinely performing sets of 5 to 8 reps with 275 lbs in the Bent Over Barbell Row (instead of only one or two)

I could do 120-lb Dumbbell Bench Presses without shaking

I no longer needed straps for Pull-ups, Pull-downs, Seated Cable Rows, and other pulling movements

My Squat went from high 400’s to 525

Did a One Arm DB Snatch with a 150 lb Dumbbell with NO HOOK GRIP!

Of all the things I’ve tried, increasing my Grip Strength

had the biggest effect on my strength performance EVER!

These are just a handful of the numbers that I remember from nearly ten years ago.

And while you may see slightly different numbers, I GUARANTEE that you will see strength increases once you start training your Grip seriously, too.

This DVD will show you how you can implement Grip Strength Training into your current program without any hassle.

But before we get into that, let’s look at what exactly is involved when speaking of Grip Strength.

What is Grip Strength?

Grip Strength often gets the reputation of being a “hand strength thing” but it is much more than that.

Grip is everything from the elbow down. Many muscles in the forearm cross at points from the top of the elbow, to the wrist, and furthermore out through the fingers and thumbs.

Grip Strength is the Measure of a Man! Think about it – when you shake someone’s hand, you can tell a LOT about that person just by their hand shake. A good solid hand shake conveys confidence and poise, while a dead fish hand shake makes you think the person is weak, unworthy of your trust, and questionable.

How’s your hand shake…?

Is Your HandShake Like Holding a Dead Fish? Weak, limp, and pathetic?

Why is Grip Strength Important?

Grip Strength is important for more than just creating a good first impression. It also allows for many physical advantages as well. Here are some examples.

Hand Strength

Think about this for a moment – when you lift weights, how often do you use your hands? Practically every single lift, right? So doesn’t it make sense to devote some time to training your hands in order to increase performance on all the lifts in which the hands are involved?

The Answer is YES, and you need to start RIGHT AWAY!

Elbow Stability

All the muscles that cross the elbow, influence the elbow. Thus, any lift that involves flexion, extension or isometric positioning of the elbow will be influenced and benefited by a stronger Grip. A stronger Grip will help lift heavier weights in Curls, Bench Press, hold longer Handstands.

Forearm Size and Strength

Because Grip Training stimulates the musculature of the forearm, trainees will see increases in not only strength, but also size in the forearms. Therefore, focused Grip Training will allow lifters to use heavier weights while also packing on more muscle throughout the entire arm. This increase in size is also a benefit for combat athletes, because a bigger forearm is tougher to grab onto by an opponent than a skinny pipe cleaner sized forearm.

Wrist Strength / Stability

The wrists are capable of many postures and each one must be trained in order to maximize strength and stability in each position. Aggressive athletes that dive for balls and experience collisions on a routine basis need to address this area in order to keep themselves from getting hurt and missing playing time. A stable wrist is also needed for all pressing movements and for kettlebell work.

Thumb Strength

The thumb is like the fat kid in gym class – often forgotten, and never chosen first for the team. Unfortunately this kind of neglect leaves a huge hole in your strength training, keeping you from reaching your potential on lifts like the Deadlift and leaving you open for injury on the field and court.

It’s time to do something to strengthen this lone soldier. Luckily for you, Home Made Strength II was designed by the man with the strongest thumbs in the world.

Finger Strength

Picture yourself helping some friends move into their new house. You volunteer to help them lug all their heavy furniture, boxes, tables, and their piano into their new place. But you find that your fingers are too weak to keep up. In fact, your buddy’s wife is pulling her weight better than you are. How embarassing is it to realize you have a set of old lady hands?

It doesn’t have to be that way…find out how you could be benefiting with just a little regular grip training:

What Does Grip Strength Do for You?

Stronger Lifting & Pulling

With a stronger grip, you will be able to perform better in exercises requiring you to lift and pull. Can you imagine not needing to use straps on all your Deadlifts, Rows, and Shrugs anymore? Instead, strengthen your Grip and save your straps for your heaviest rack pulls and shrugs, only!

Better Control

With a stronger grip, you can make the weights, dumbbells, and barbells do what you want them to do. Your pressing form will be tight. Your rows will be text-book. You won’t have to throw weights around just to perform curls, putting your shoulders and back at risk. Better quality reps lead to better all-around results.

Longer Lasting Endurance

Think of the weights you’re moving on your lifts right now. You’re working hard and getting it done. But now imagine being able to double your repetitions per set. These kinds of jumps are possible when you don’t have to worry about the weights prying your hands open and having to cut the set short. With Grip Strength comes Grip Endurance, which means you’ll be getting more reps per set, building more muscle, developing more strength, and burning more calories.

Improved Radiant Tension

The great Kettlebell Master of Sport, Pavel Tsatsouline, speaks about Radiation, the ability to increase strength throughout the body by creating tension with the hands. Because the hands are hard-wired into the CNS, they are able to increase strength production throughout the body when you tense them, and this effect is magnified when your lower arms are even stronger.

Improved Performance in Sports

Many sports involve the use of the hands and forearms: Baseball, Football, Tennis, LaCrosse, Wrestling, MMA, Boxing, and more. Stronger hands mean more home runs, more tackles, fewer fumbles, harder punches, better wrist control, more takedowns, better puck control…in short – BETTER SPORTS PERFORMANCE!

All of these Benefits are Possible When You Train with the Equipment I Show you in this DVD!

You are probably wondering what kind of equipment is shown in Home Made Strength II – Grip Strength Edition.

First off, this is not some garbage that you put together on Monday and then ends up breaking on Friday. This stuff is built to last.

Also, this is not a bunch of knock-off equipment. Get ready to make one-of-a-kind pieces of equipment, enhancements to current pieces that are available, and things that simply don’t exist on the market.

Here is a list of the Equipment that you will be building when you pick up Home Made Strength II TODAY!

Dynamic Thumb Box

Benefit to You: Combines the benefit of a block weight with a hand gripper, so that you can train both pinching to strengthen the thumb and crush to strengthen the fingers through various ranges of motion. Total Cost to You: $8

Modified Thumb Clamp

Benefit to You: Multiple grips can be used on this versatile piece of equipment. Allows you to isolate the thumb, isolate fingers, or train all four at the same time. Resistance is also adjustable to accommodate different strength levels. Total Cost to You: $9

Napalm’s Nightmare

Benefit to You: Combines the hip power generated by Kettlebell Swings with the open hand strength built with Rolling Handle Deadlift Devices. Handle spins as the implement is used, increasing the level of the challenge. Total Cost to You: $30

Loading Pin

Benefit to You: A must-have-item for anyone who is serious about training for Grip Strength. Imperative to own one of these in order to train with many mainstream pieces of Grip Training Equipment. Total Cost to You: $15

Thick Bar Dumbbell

Benefit to You: Open Hand Strength, Finger Strength, Thumb Strength. The increased size of the gripping surface forces you to squeeze the fingers harder and engage the thumb. Great for combat-style athletes; mocks the type of grip used when grasping body parts, uniforms and gi’s. Total Cost to You: Less than $5

Home Made Hand Health Shots

Benefit to You: Work all of the muscles of the hands, fingers, and thumbs, from the major prime movers to the smaller stabilizers, under light resistance, promoting blood flow, balance, and recovery after heavy training sessions. Prevents injuries and imbalances. Total Cost to You: $8

Extensor Bucket from Hell

Benefit to You: Effectively trains the extensors, promoting balance of strength between the opposing muscle groups. This enables continued strength progress and prevents injuries. Especially beneficial for those who perform manual labor. Total Cost to You: $4.59

Deloading Device

Benefit to You: Provides assistance in lifting heavy objects without the use of a partner, enabling you to focus more on making a lift and eliminating distractions. Used in tandem with elastic training bands. Total Cost to You: $11

Gripper Plateau Buster (Top Secret Diesel Crew Gripper Training Tool)

Benefit to You: This gem targets Crushing Strength primarily. Provides incremental assistance in closing Grippers, enabling you to power past plateaus and sticking points in your Gripper training. Total Cost to You: $7

Loadable Rafter Pinch

Benefit to You: Increases Thumb Strength and Wrist Strength. Helps builds the forearms. Can be used for Pinch Deadlifts, Pinch Swings, various Wrist Manipulations. Total Cost to You: $27

Adjustable Width Pinch Device

Benefit to You: Develops Thumb Strength. Great for developing coordinated Radiant Tension throughout the body. Can be used to simulate one of the staple Grip Contest events. Great for sports Teams who thrive on team challenges. Total Cost to You: $57

HARD TIMES Require Drastic Measures!

Look, I know its hard times. I’ve felt them!

I have struggled to scrape up enough money to buy the equipment I needed for my training.

Right after college, I had a car payment, college loans, credit card bills, cell phone bills, and had to buy food and supplements. I had very little extra money to throw at training equipment. It took me years to accumulate what I have gotten.

I can’t begin to count the number of people I have spoken with that have told me the same exact thing – their budgets these days are just not big enough to pay the prices equipment companies are asking for their equipment

For new trainers and lifters with limited resources, it can be damn hard to scrape up the money to put together a respectable collection of equipment. But it doesn’t have to be that way anymore…

Think about how nice it is going to be to have 10 more pieces of Grip Training equipment and never have to worry about this stuff again:

Never having to worry about saving 50 lbs of change in order to buy your next piece of equipment.

Never having to to sell old pieces in your training equipment history in order to get new stuff.

Never having to to comb ebay and Cragslist in order to find crazy deals.

Never having to to hold your progress back because you lack the necessary equipment.

Never having to to manipulate your significant other into letting you get another piece of equipment.

Can you picture how nice it is going to be not to have to worry about that crap anymore?

======>>>>>>>>>Isn’t it going to be awesome to improve your grip strength?

Once you start improving your grip strength you’ll see all of these awesome benefits:

Confidence

You’re going to push up bigger numbers because that is all you’re going to be thinking about – Smashing PR’s – not how weak your hands feel.

Endurance

Get stronger hands, and you’ll get more reps. It doesn’t matter if you’re benching, deadlifting, squatting, curling or snatching – more reps equals more muscle and more strength.

Improved Neural Connection

Your hands are hard-wired into your central nervous system. When your hands are stronger, everything else is stronger. Grip helps everything.

Resistance to Injury

Stronger muscles and joints hold up tougher and recover from injury faster. So, if you train your Grip the right way, you will have fewer injuries, miss fewer workouts, and lose fewer reps in the gym.

Don’t Just Take My Word For It – Here is What Others Think About Home Made Strength II

“Jedd, Thanks for these videos! I lift outside and in my garage. No gym membership here:)

I can’t wait to build some of these strength training tools! It’s been really hard here training with just my 300 pounds of weights and bench…I am definitely lacking some serious strength training tools. Can’t wait for the grip training DVD either when you release that next. I tried grip training about 4 months ago and I am already loving it. The first time I did it I was in the garage for 2 hours and didn’t even realize it!! I know what you mean when you say you love it. Something empowering about gripping heavy weights and crushing your PRs.

Jerry Tennant

“I purchased the original HMS video and it helped me build some good homemade quality implements. My personal favorite is the bowling ball mace. I would show you a video of me using my mace but I lost all the video I was editing, which was going to be featured on my youtube channel and blog site. Back to the beginning I go. Thanks.”

Ron Baguisa Selected Strength Training Systems http://SelectedStrength.Webs.com/

“I loved the first Home Made Strength and you did it again with Home Made Strength II. I firmly believe that grip strength is an essential part of any serious training program. Your DVD just gave me the tools to build all the grip training implements that I need to train all my athletes that my budget would never have been able to supply for them. Your step by step directions made it so easy to do. Thanks for putting together a DVD that will benefit the strength world!”

Jerry Shreck Head Strength & Conditioning Coach Bucknell University VarietyTrainer.com

With all this benefit, there must be some catch, right? If that is what you’re thinking, then read below…

MISCONCEPTION #1: These pieces are tough to put together…

DEAD WRONG – In most cases, these pieces take less than 5 minutes to build.

MISCONCEPTION #2: These materials are expensive to buy…

NOT TRUE – Most of these peices cost less than $15. The most expensive ONE out of the ELEVEN that I cover will be the one you LOVE the most, and it’s MY FAVORITE piece.

MISCONCEPTION #3: This stuff is cheap and will fall apart…

COMPLETELY FALSE – I have had all of these pieces of equipment for at least a year – many for several years – and all of them I use on a routine basis. Not a single piece of equipment I show you has ever broken or malfunctioned.

MISCONCEPTION #4: I can get the same results at the Gym…

DOUBT IT – Unless you train at a truly hardcore gym, your facility probably does not have any Grip-Specific equipment that is worthwhile.

MISCONCEPTION #5: I can’t build this stuff because I live alone…

NO WAY – I put all of this stuff together by myself on video. IF I CAN DO IT, YOU CAN DO IT, because I am the least mechanically inclined person in the entire state of Pennsylvania.

MISCONCEPTION #6: I can’t use this, I have no training partner…

ABSOLUTELY UNTRUE – I train completely alone every day. I never have a spotter or anyone helping me load up equipment, and I use this stuff to the fullest capacity week in and week out!

NO MORE EXCUSES for why you can’t make your own stuff anymore.

It’s time to take action and pick up HOME MADE STRENGTH II!

THE PRICE => Just $37

Jedd, I’m

READY

to Get Home Made Strength II. How Fast Can I Get My Hands on It?

You can view this DVD WITHIN MINUTES!

On-Line DVD’s

This is an On-line DVD, so you will immediately receive a link to view the entire 75-minute Video right on your computer within minutes of making your purchase. The On-line DVD also comes with a download link to a PDF “Quick Start Blue Print” that you can print out and take with you to the Hardware Store and lay out on your work bench to guide you when putting all of the equipment together.

Physical DVD’s

You will have the option to pick up a Physical DVD, complete with hard cover, outstanding graphics, and collectible chapter card, once your initial payment is completed. The Physical DVD will be mailed to you and you will have it within days. You will then be able to view HMS2 on your PC/Laptop/MAC and on your television. The video quality is pristine!

Plus You Get the Quick Start Blue Print!!!

One of the things that I strive for when I design products for you is to provide a resource that is complete and makes things easier for you.

The only negative feedback I have ever gotten on Home Made Strength #1 was that we did not provide a parts list. You had to watch the video, write down what you needed, or just remember it all when you went to the store.

NOT THIS TIME!

With the Home Made Strength Quick Start Blue Print I added complete Parts Lists and Step-by-Step Instructions.

It can’t get any easier to build this equipment unless I do it for you

, and as much as I’d love to,

I just dont have the time

…

When you grab your copy today, you will get the Download Link to the Quick Start Blue Print that you can instantly download to your PC, and print out within minutes.

And because I aim to fully and completely OVER-DELIVER on your investment today, I have even put together 3 Killer Grip Workouts for each piece of new Training Equipment! That’s right, I show you what to buy, how to build the equipment, and 30 different ways to train with the new additions to your training arsenal!

Let’s Look at EVERYTHING You are Getting…

Home Made Strength II – Online DVD Video Downloads

Home Made Strength II – Hard Copy DVD (if you upgrade)

Home Made Strength II – Quick Start Blue Print

And That’s Not All…

Check out These Killer Bonuses

Developing a Stronger Grip for Faster Kettlebell Results Instantly Downloadable PDF

These 5 drills will help you increase your hand strength to specifically prepare for the dynamic nature of Kettlebell Training. Four of the Five drills utilize Kettlebells ONLY while the other drill involves using one of the pieces of equipment you will learn to build in Home Made Strength II. Running out of Grip Power before your Snatch Test is over? I’ve got you covered! Valued at $19.95

Quick Wins for Improving Grip Strength Instantly Downloadable PDF

There are hundreds of Grip Training tools on the market, but are they necessary? This report will show you the 8 tools you need to have in your arsenal in order to build Killer Grip Strength while also keeping your lower arms healthy and injury free! These tools will give you strong hands while making you into an even more rugged version of yourself. Doesn’t that sound cool? Valued at $19.95!

8 Weeks of Grip Training Workouts PDF Document and 45-minute Video

This PDF includes eight Weeks worth of workouts. Not familiar with Grip Training terminology? NO problem. In the Video, I will show you EXACTLY how each drill is done. The PDF is a full 8-week schedule you can print off and take with you to the gym. Each workout has 3 movements, for a total of 24 exercises. Don’t have the equipment to do one of the exercises? No problem – swap them out with one of the exercises from HMS2. Valued at $47!

Here’s Why You Need To Act Right Now Before It’s Too Late…

I want to get this product into the hands of as many people as possible, so I am using a very low introductory price.

But, this introductory price will not last very long. Very shortly, I will be raising the price. Your best bet is to pick it up RIGHT NOW so you don’t regret it later.

I really would hate to see you miss out, especially if you’re a strength coach on a limited budget or a person who trains at home that doesn’t have a lot of extra cash.

So I’ve given you my offer. I stand behind it, and I believe in everything inside 100%. I use every piece of this equipment each week, plus I show you the ways to use them in order to get the most out of them – the exact ways I have trained with them over the years.

This Is Completely RISK FREE For You For 60 Full Days!

You know, a lot of people sell stuff online that they have never tried themselves and assume you will LOVE it without any buyer’s protection. Well, that’s not me. All of my products are things I’ve used and gotten great results from.

I started doing all this because I want others to have the same success I have had. When you help someone get stronger, that is the greatest feeling!

So…If you’re not 100% happy with everything after 60 Days just let me know and I Will Personally Buy Back Your Product – and on top of that, I’ll Let You Keep the Whole Thing – I stand by my product.

Take the full 60 days, just in case you don’t get the chance to make all of the pieces of equipment right away. I’m sure that will be enough time for you to decide. You have nothing to lose.

Here’s What I Want You to Do Right Now…

To get your hands on the Home Made Strength II: Grip Strength Edition right now, have your credit card ready and use the Risk Free Action form below.

Just click the big orange button below to get started. It will take 2 minutes to fill out the form, then you will be taken to your Instant Access Download Page.

If you have any questions, feel free to email me at [email protected] and I will personally get back to you as soon as I possibly can.

Click the Big Orange Button Below…

THE PRICE => Just $37

NOTE: Home Made Strength II is a completely downloadable product. No physical products will be shipped (unless you choose to upgrade). After you order, you’ll get INSTANT ACCESS. The format for the document is Adobe Acrobat PDF, which can be viewed on Mac or PC.

P.S. Now is the time to enhance the next 12 months of your training. Get the DVD, start making Home Made Grip Equipment, and start getting stronger. It’s time to take action – Don’t Just talk about it – BE ABOUT IT.

P.P.S. Remember, your success is money-back-guaranteed! If this DVD doesn’t honestly show you how to put together quality strength equipment I will send your money back to you.

P.P.P.S. 30 days from now, you’ll either be a month older, or you’ll have added 10 required pieces to your strength training equipment collection. Is this really too much of an investment for you to make HUGE improvements in your training?

If you can already Pinch Two-45’s, Close #4 Grippers, and Pull 500-lbs Double Overhand on the Deadlift, this is not for you!

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